Hirst’s sharks are icons of predatory power in purgatory—the natural history equivalent of a Francis Bacon pope. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living was commissioned by Charles Saatchi and promoted as the headliner of his 1992 Young British Artists 1 show, re-exhibited on the three-stop tour of “Sensation”, then shown again when Saatchi opened his gallery in County Hall in 2003. Few works enjoy such marketing, but the ad man was trialling a new business model and, in 2004, he sold the king carnivore through Larry Gagosian to hedge fund tycoon Steve Cohen for $8.3m. However, a spokesman for Mr Saatchi declared that The Physical Impossibility…had sold for a spin-doctored $12m and the false benchmark price hit the headlines. The deal seemed to attract a different sort of billionaire to Hirst’s work.
Shortly after, Hirst started making more sharks in formaldehyde and collectors who helicoptered out to his Gloucestershire studio were invited to inspect the carcasses in the cold room. The Wrath of God, 2005, a baby shark on a white rectangular plinth, was exhibited in Mexico City and acquired by Lee Kun-Hee for a reported $4m. Death Explained, 2007, a larger shark split between two tanks, was bought by Hirst’s friend and hunting buddy, Victor Pinchuk. (The Ukrainian oligarch owns over 25 works—probably a handful more after the “Beautiful” sale—and is planning a Hirst solo show for June.) Then there were two shark works in the Sotheby’s auction: a solo shark titled The Kingdom which sold on the phone for £9.6m and four bull sharks in two tanks called Theology, Philosophy, Medicine, Justice, which failed to sell in the room and were purchased after the auction by Zurich dealer Andrea Caratsch for £2.5m. Furthermore, a single work consisting of seven sharks titled Seven Deadly Sins is believed to be on order for the ultra-secretive Paris-based collector Philippe Niarchos. Although the series is evolving its variations, Sandy Heller, Cohen’s art advisor, says: “In my opinion, there is only one shark.”
Before we move on to mammals, it’s worth discussing Hirst’s fish, if only because they may be the artist’s sexiest representation of women. The link is most overt in works like Love Lost, which consists of an oversized fish tank containing a gynecologist’s office and live fresh water fish. (Adam Sender bought it for $800,000 in November 2005.) An interviewer once remarked to Hirst that there was surprisingly little overt sex in his work. To which the artist replied: “When I tried to deal with sex, it always turned into murder.” Indeed, this is an apt evocation of a longstanding lesser known series of some 20 skeleton sculptures that go by the name of “Adam and Eve” and it captures the Jack-the-Ripper quality of figurative works like the bronze Virgin Mother and the marble Anatomy of an Angel. Even sweet Charity is crippled and her collection box violated.
In 1991, the same year in which he made his original shark, Hirst did a series of sister works of fish in formaldehyde, which are amongst his most elegant “natures mortes”. Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding, for example, consists of six rows of individually encased fish in two cabinets and was once described as a “static ballet in an absurd movement toward nowhere.” The first formaldehyde work to be shown in London (in a group show at the Serpentine), it too was purchased by Saatchi, travelled with “Sensation”, and then was bought back by Hirst in a £6m-for-12-works deal in 2004.
Hirst continues to produce exquisite works of suspended fish. One of the most dignified pieces in the “Beautiful” sale was a cruciform stainless steel cabinet containing fish skeletons on one side and fish in formaldehyde on the other. However, the “Beautiful” sale also contained a near replica of the iconic Isolated Elements wall-piece titled Can’t Live With You, Can’t Live Without You. It had 12 shelves rather than six and the fish were smaller but, formally, it was the same work.
Hirst’s re-making of works with minor variations and Andrew Lloyd Webber-style titles seems to be satisfying short-term demand amongst a new cohort of collectors, but many suspect that this recycling will have a negative effect on his brand reputation in the long term. Art historian Gilda Williams suggests a Pop art parallel. “Warhol would make as many works as he could sell; there are hundreds of Brillo boxes and Flower paintings,” she explained. “Beginning in the late 1970s, he cannibalised his early work with the ‘Reversals’ of his own iconic images of Marilyn and Mao.”
Dead animals in toxic chemicals would normally be the very definition of a difficult lot. Before “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever”, Hirst’s top 100 auction prices contained only four formaldehyde works. After the sale, his top 40 contained nine. An astonishing feat.
Earlier this year, Hirst donated an exhibition copy of his classic “romantic conceptual” cow-and-calf work Mother and Child Divided to the Tate, whilst Anthony D’Offay accessioned one of the three 1994 sheep titled Away from the Flock. This is good news. Hirst sceptics often remark on the artist’s relative lack of museum validation. Although his retrospective at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples was well received, it is the artist’s only large-scale survey to date. Although Hirst believers tend to reply that he doesn’t need the public sector, it is worth noting that the market has no memory and even if well-stocked private collections are open to the public, they rarely bring the footfall or the scholarship—and hence the sense of consequence—of a major national museum.
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