Damien Hirst is currently exhibiting one of his largest shows to date at a centuries old vineyard-exhibition space in the South of France. On view are a number of new and celebrated works, such as his series of encased animals in formaldehyde. The first work in the latter series was dubbed “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”, and made in the 1990s, during the British artist’s ascent as he’d win the Turner Prize in 1995.
A new investigation by the Guardian, however, reports that several formaldehyde sculptures dated to that period were allegedly created in 2017. Three works in particular, which depict two calves, a dove and a shark, show no trace of having existed prior to its creation by Hirst’s employees in his Gloucestershire studio in the past seven years. All three have gone on to exhibit across the world — from Gagosian Hong Kong in 2017 to an ongoing exhibition at the Munich Museum of Urban and Contemporary Art.
An artwork’s date of creation denotes the time it was made, with certain exceptions containing a dash, such as say “1993-1999”, the dates given in the past to Hirst’s formaldehyde works. The first in the series, “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”, presented a problem in that the original shark had eroded, leading to its buyer, American billionaire Steve Cohen, paying to have it replaced. “It’s a big dilemma,’’ Hirst previously said about the issue. “Artists and conservators have different opinions about what’s important, the original artwork or the original intention. I come from a conceptual art background, so I think it should be the intention. It’s the same piece. But the jury will be out for a long time to come.”
While Hirst and his lawyers have stood on the grounds that the physical making of an artwork is not its original date, “but rather the intention and the idea behind the artwork”, the Guardian report spotlights how several of his latest iterations were either misdated with the end point in 1999, as opposed to 2017, or have dropped the date altogether. Read the full report here.
