By Quentin Young
November 7 2008

A young Damien Hirst bought the carcass of a tiger shark, dropped it into a formaldehyde-filled vitrine, gave the thing a name that sounds like it was overheard in a cognitive philosophy seminar, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, installed it in a gallery, and promptly got famous.

He’s now that kind of celebrity where the mere presence of his name on a wall card marks the associated item that’s identified as art as important, not to mention priced like a holy relic, which in a sense is what it is.

In September, Hirst, now 43, made international news when he took an unprecedented step and bypassed the galleries to offer by auction through Sotheby’s works in a show called Beautiful Inside My Head Forever.

He took in $198 million, which exceeded expectations and cemented his reputation, if not as a master artist than as a master of the art market.

The expensive production of the shark piece was funded by gallery owner Charles Saatchi, who had been impressed by an earlier Hirst effort involving animal remains, A Thousand Years, which consisted of a cow’s head and live flies.

Viewers could observe the flies through all the stages of their life cycle, from maggotry to mortality.

Dead animals encased in glass is an enduring Hirst trope. His lucky subjects have included a zebra and sheep. One of his cows is among four works now on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver through next August.

Called Saint Sebastian, Exquisite Pain, the piece consists of a cow shot through with roughly 40 arrows and bound vertically by metal cable to a white steel construction beam.

The work is visually stunning, not least due to the animal’s expression, with its lifeless open eyes and exposed teeth.

The reference in the title to the Christian martyr is reinforced by visual cues, but, with the work’s broad potential for interpretation, the artist did himself a disservice by confining it within such a narrow frame of meaning. The construction beam prominently bears the letters “SS.” Think of the possibilities.

Two other works in the show, War After War and Incorruptible Crown, consist of butterflies or simply their wings affixed to a background of solid color and amount to little more than craft projects, although in the case of Incorruptible Crown, with its intricate patterns, a project that required considerable patience or a team of assistants (Hirst was reported to have 120 employees).

For the fourth piece, Hirst built a large cabinet with six long shelves, filled it with pharmaceutical boxes, and named it Nothing is a Problem for Me, which, considering the work’s aesthetic value in relation to its market value, could be read as swagger. Concentrate on what in the piece to admire and there is a pleasure in reading in succession the threateningly clinical names of the drugs. Ditalgesic, Dermovate—NN ointment, Brufen, Alphosyl cream, Clozaril, Rimactane, Junifen, Gaviscon liquid, which the label tells us is “for the relief of heartburn and indigestion due to gastric reflux.”

Hirst is a conceptual artist, and the ideas behind his works often take precedence over the art itself.

“Art goes on in your head,” he told England’s Telegraph newspaper. “There are ongoing ideas I’ve been working out for years, like how to make a rainbow in a gallery. I’ve always got a massive list of titles, of ideas for shows, and of works without titles.”

The problem is, art does not go on in your head. Ideas go on in your head. Art goes on when those ideas are given form outside your head. A symphonic score is not music. The performance of it is. We admire Van Gogh not because of his idea to paint a starry night but because of the actual paint-on-canvass achievement of The Starry Night. Could an assistant have mustered such a masterpiece?

Saint Sebastian works because it is interesting to look at. Just walking up to the vitrine elicits a thrill. However, it’s a dirty thrill, largely based on grotesquerie. What new art in future years will shock differently and render Saint Sebastian an overtaken artifact?

Patrick Riley, an MCA DENVER employee whose job includes monitoring the gallery containing the Hirst exhibit, has watched visitors evince a wide range of responses to Saint Sebastian.

He said some visitors react harshly or “kind of laugh and say they can’t look at it anymore.” Others find it profound.

“Some people come in and say, ‘Isn’t this the most beautiful thing in contemporary art today?’”

Riley said he thinks the work has captured a moment in art history.

But he added, “I’m not sure how timeless it is.”

Above: Damien Hirst’s work Nothing is a Problem for Me is built a large cabinet with six long shelves, filled with pharmaceutical boxes. Inside are drugs like “Ditalgesic,” “Dermovate—NN ointment,” “Brufen,” “Alphosyl cream,” “Clozaril,” “Rimactane,” “Junifen,” “Gaviscon liquid.” Photo by Richard Peterson.