Damien Hirst – författare

Gordon Burn first met Damien Hirst nine years ago. They both admired David Sylvester's interviews with Francis Bacon, and agreed that they would do something similar when the time was right. The resulting conversations appear in this work.

A revealing collection of quotations from world-renowned artist Damien HirstHirst-isms is a collection of quotations—bold, surprising, often humorous, and always insightful—from celebrated artist Damien Hirst, whose controversial work explores the connections between art, religion, science, life, and death. Emerging in the 1990s as a leading member of the Young British Artists (YBAs), Hirst first became famous and gained a reputation as a provocateur with a series of artworks featuring dead and sometimes dissected animals (including a shark, sheep, and cow) preserved in glass tanks filled with formaldehyde.Gathered from interviews and other primary sources and organized by subject, these quotations explore Hirst’s early years, family life, and the beginnings of his fascination with art; the major themes of his work; his influences and heroes; his motivation; his process and the boundary-pushing production of his work; and his thoughts on the art world, fame, and money. The result is a comprehensive and nuanced book that sheds new light on a fascinating and important contemporary artist.Select quotations from the book:“The less I feel like an artist, the better I feel.”“I like it when people love my art. I like it when people hate my art. I just don’t want them to ignore my art.”“Painting’s like the most fabulous illusion, because there’s nothing at stake. Except yourself.”“I’m interested in the confusion between art and life, I like it when the world gets in the way.”“Sometimes you have to step over the edge to know where it is.”

Hirst’s Psalm paintings allude to Gothic stained glass windows and the circular patterns of Buddhist mandalasThis beautifully illustrated book constitutes a comprehensive survey of Damien Hirst's Psalm paintings. The 150 works in the series are made up of iridescent butterfly wings and paint on canvas, which combine to form kaleidoscopic patterns reminiscent of Gothic stained glass windows. Dating from 2008, the paintings address some of Hirst's most enduring and important themes: beauty, art, belief, life and death. Each of the fully illustrated paintings is accompanied by the Old Testament prayer from which its title is derived, the text rendered on images of individually selected marble samples. Also included is a complete list of works, and essays by art writers Michael Bracewell and Amie Corry. In his essay, Bracewell writes: "The Psalm paintings can't help but bring together, in literal form, such fundamental concepts as beauty, and power over death through prayer and belief, while simultaneously seeming to propose solely their own—albeit spectacular—abstraction. As they take their place within the greater canon of Hirst's art, these paintings extend his fascination with natural history and the potentially synonymous relationships between life, death, art and 'beauty,' and the language of Christian faith and religion." The Complete Psalm Paintings is an exquisite companion to one of Hirst's most beautiful series.Damien Hirst was born in Bristol in 1965. He first came to public attention in 1988 when he conceived and curated Freeze, an exhibition of his own work and that of his contemporaries staged in an abandoned London warehouse. Since then Hirst has become widely recognized as one of the most influential artists of his generation. Alongside over 80 solo exhibitions, he has worked on numerous curatorial projects. In 2008, Hirst took the unprecedented step of bypassing gallery involvement by selling 244 new works at a Sotheby's, London auction. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1995 and received a major solo retrospective at Tate Modern, London. He lives in Devon, England.

Published on the occasion of the inaugural exhibition at Newport Street Gallery, built to house work from Damien Hirst’s art collection, John Hoyland: Power Stations provides a fascinating insight into the life and work of one of Britain’s leading abstract painters. Renowned for his intuitive manipulation of color, form and texture, John Hoyland (1934–2011) saw nonfigurative imagery as offering "the potential for the most advanced depth of feeling and meaning." Including work drawn from a pivotal period in Hoyland’s career—1964 to 1982—Power Stations shows an artist equally comfortable with geometric and gestural abstraction, combining elements of both in vividly hued, large-scale paintings. The first extensive survey of Hoyland’s work since the artist’s death, this volume reaffirms Hoyland’s status as a major innovative force within the pantheon of international abstraction.

“It takes a kind of genius to push kitsch to the point where it becomes sublime … this fictional museum is not only impressive, but moving.” –Jonathan Jones, The GuardianEvoking the classic dive books popularized by Jacques-Yves Cousteau, this limited-edition, leatherbound publication follows the underwater expedition that accompanied Damien Hirst’s latest project, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable. Shot in the Indian Ocean over a number of years, the extraordinary underwater images of the artworks’ recovery were photographed by Christoph Gerigk, who has twice been awarded the World Press Photo Foundation’s prize for international photojournalism for his work on Egypt’s sunken cities. Also featured are photographs of the above-water operation by Steve Russell Studios. Signed by the artist and numbered in an edition of 1,000, the publication includes 128 full-color images, 94 of which are double-page spreads. The book’s pages feature a die-cut hole and gold-edged paper.

Sweet Liberty brings together 15 years of work by painter Dan Colen (born 1979), one of the “bad boys” of the New York art world who emerged onto the scene in the early 2000s alongside artists like Dash Snow and Ryan McGinley. Witty, shocking, poignant and nihilistic, Colen’s art presents a portrait of contemporary America and investigates the acts of producing and looking at art.Alongside significant early works such as “Me, Jesus and the Children” (2001–03), this publication features paintings from Colen’s long-running Gum and Trash series, as well as four installations in which Colen appropriates imagery from the mass media and American subcultures. This volume marks, in Colen’s own words, “the first time I’ve been able to present the full range of my work and the wide-ranging ideas, crafts, materials, technologies and processes that I engage with.”

This exquisite hardback volume, boasting a ribbed leather spine, presents the second collection of a series of drawings on paper by Damien Hirst (born 1965), rendered in a range of mediums including silverpoint, charcoal and ink. The drawings form part of Hirst's most ambitious project to date, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, presented at the Pinault collection's two Venetian museums—the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana—from April to December 2017. The exhibition marked the first time in the Collection's history that both museums had been dedicated to the work of a single artist.

Loves Moods is a beautifully produced catalogue showcasing a captivating new sub-series within Damien Hirst’s butterfly gloss paintings. Featuring all 100 works in the series, none of which have been exhibited publicly, the book offers a visual exploration of colour, emotion and connection.In each painting, two colours blend, meet or collide at the centre of the canvas. These interactions — sometimes harmonious, sometimes jarring — mirror the volatile oscillations of love. The series represents a progressive exploration of Hirst’s iconic butterfly motif, a symbol he has long associated with themes of transformation, life and death.The introductory essay discusses the historical use of butterflies in art and their significance in Hirst’s oeuvre, while also delving into how the Loves Moods paintings reflect on the art of loving, solitude and relationships.

A publication to celebrate the exhibition Sunshine (Complex Relationships Explained Simply), which was on view in Claridge’s ArtSpace from October to December 2021. Features high resolution images of all the works from the show, including Hirst’s iconic pipe cleaner animals and colour charts.The pipe cleaners included aimed to bring out a child-like joy in art appreciators and lended a sense of exuberance that was matched by the vibrancy of Hirst’s colour chart series, a group of oversized works that are sculptural replications of charts from Hirst’s collection.

Damien Hirst:The Complete Works is a landmark series of books, unrivalled in scope and detail, documenting Damien Hirst's oeuvre in its entirety.

On the early work of Britain’s most successful living artist, from his formative years at Goldsmiths to his pioneering conceptual pieces among the Young British ArtistsThe stellar ascent of Damien Hirst (born 1965) began with his enrollment at Goldsmiths College in 1986, where he quickly became one of the standout artists of his class. This retrospective focuses on the early years of Hirst’s trailblazing career, featuring his university work, his first Spot Painting and his experiments with collage.Additionally, this volume highlights his most iconic projects, such as the staggering 1999 painted bronze sculpture Hymn and his now-infamous series of conceptual works in which taxidermied animals are suspended in vitrines of formaldehyde. A selection of quotes accompanies the illustrations and reveals the themes which have remained constant throughout the artist’s career: beauty, religion, science, life and death.