"End Game"- My Thoughts on Damien Hirst

The work of Damien Hirst can be described as an approach of skepticism to the way we see the world. By confronting common worldviews, ones that are hardly noticed, he allow viewers of his work to examine their own values and where they stand in the world with those values.Born in Bristol, England in 1965. He grew up in Leeds with his mother, Mary Brennan, and his stepfather. He took a foundation course at Leeds School of Art before applying for college. He was rejected by St. Martin's but moved to London in 1986 when he was accepted onto the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths College, graduating in 1989. While still a student in 1988, Damien conceived, organised and promoted "Freeze", an exhibition held in a Docklands warehouse. The show featured several of Damien's pieces, and work by 16 of his fellow Goldsmith's' students. This self promoted exhibit did amazing well, and is believed to be the start of the "Young British Artist" movement

The central, though not exclusive theme of Hirst's work has been an exploration of mortality, a traditional subject that Hirst has updated and extended with wit, verve, originality and force. Another consistent theme in Damien's work is the use of medical paraphernalia.The inspiration for his pharmacy pieces was the desire to make art that people really believe in, like they do medicine. Hirst states "Pharmacies provoke an idea of confidence, of trust in minimalism. I love medical logos, so minimal, so clean, there's something dumb about it". In "Pharmacy" is a room sized installation created to represent a real pharmacy with cabinets containing bottle and packages of prescription drugs. On the counter are four apothecary bottles which represent the four elements; earth, air, fire and water. Always having been fascinated with pharmaceuticals and their ability to gain peoples trust in a way not most things can. He easily address why we keep fighting to stay alive forever, while still facing the fact that we cannot, this however does not make us want the impossible any less. One of my favorite pieces is "End Game", A pristine steel case, made up of three distinct sections, measuring over six feet high and twelve feet wide. In the central section, a male and female skeleton hang back to back, facing away from each other. In Hirst's words, "they seem to hover between life and death." When I saw this piece myself in the MFAH, I believed that the skeletons who "hover" between life and death are more mesmerized in the medical devices believing that it will give them the ability to prevent death for as long as they can, only to not notice that they are already dead, and have ignored the world.



End Game
2004
Glass, Stainless steel, human skeleton, and medical equipment

Pharmacy


The Young British Artist (YBA's) is the name given to a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists that mostly attended Goldsmiths College in London, Damien Hirst was one of these college students who were discovered by Charles Saatchi after a student lead exhibit. They are noted for "shock tactics", use of throwaway materials and wild-living. They achieved considerable media coverage and dominated British art during the 1990s. Some other artist YBA's are Sarah Lucas,The Chapman Brothers - Dinos & Jake,Tracey Emin, Marcus Harvey, Steve McQueen, Georgina Starr
Sam Taylor-Wood, Rachel Whiteread.

I personally have seen Damien Hirst work first hand at an End Game exhibit in the Houston Museum of fine art back in the summer of 2008. And I was my first exposure to contemporary art in that setting. Seeing his End Game piece which is still there today still resonates with me. As a person who constantly is questioning the origins of socially acceptable moral behavior, Seeing his work was the first time I saw art that went beyond beauty to appeal to me, and as an artist I made me believe for the first time of none verbal communication, to say I love his work would be an understatement. Maybe because that simple juxtaposition of life and death and how their values only can come from one another, a relationship that I always believed in and kept me "sane"


"I like the way art works, the way it brightens people's lives up... but I was having difficulty convincing the people around me that it was worth believing in and then I noticed that they were believing in medicine in exactly the same way that I wanted them to believe in art"
-Damien Hirst

source
http://www.leninimports.com/damien_hirst.html
End Game- British Contemporary Art from the Chaney Family Collection- MFAH

"Trite Quicksilver"- My Top Three

I am guessing I just didn't quite understand the assignment as well as I would have like. That is to be expected when 3-5 projects are assigned in a matter of 7 hours. Well I will make this quick because it should have been already done. These are my top three mark making pieces that I picked. I must say though I didn't think we where supposed to pick ones we would consider using as our final with the words, I did not even have enough to make that decision yet any way

"This is all just so Blah Blah Blah"- More Mark Making Critques

So this time its in a group, oh goodie getting to hear others try to prattle on about my work. Out of the six they choose these three.Some of the comments for this one, was that it was aggressive, that its design was appealing because the branch like lines leads your eyes to the negative space, while itself taking up just the right amount of space. The quote that was thought to be best to go with it by the group was "princess pout rips her teeth out" because the piece resembled something painful.Some of the words used to describe this where "whimsical" and "a b bouquet of bubbles" and "first of its kind."
This last one was constantly being compared to a fire, so much for closure. but most of the comments where "the lines are bold and wispy" and "delicate with an underlining aggression" and the quote for this one was "My stocking prove my virtue"

"Blank Impressions"- Mark Making Critiques

So another day of mark making comes to a close, I swear this is all just like design one all over again except its more dramatic and drawn out until our dying breath is one of animosity towards these marks we make. Well anyway enough prose and on with the show.The first one here ladies and gents, is one I did with a tooth brush. It was the first one picked, and was considered the best, which is absoulutely hilarious because it was one that was done without restrictions on it. As a matter of fact I snuck this one in while I guess I was supposed to be doing some over done idea that suggested to us. I like it well enough. The comments made on it was "I like that there are some conflicting elements in this piece, such as the gentleness of the curves against the harshness of the splatters and the curves verses the straight parts that litter the page"In this piece I was inspired by one that Theresa did. The more dramatic the creases are the more the ink sits into it, and I like this look. In the comments "I also like that some lines follow the folds. I especially like the fact that those lines fade out and don't follow the folds all the way from one edge to the other." One Critique is that they "didn't like that the whole 'bottom' is basically blocked out, but it does work fro the piece..."

The final one picked which was my first one I used a straw to get the branch like attachment to the blobs. It is my favorite, as In i find it aesthetically pleasing, and was fun to do. I also like how because we had to have negative space in it, it works with the overwhelming sensation of the branches. In the comments the it was stated that "I like that it is contained in the corner because it seems like it would be overwhelming if it covered more of the page."

"Blood is the new Black"- Lyrical Quotes to Scribbles

My Lines were drawn and some were picked, and although we added quotes to them to give them a little more pizazz I do not think that they really matter all that much in the end. The two above were the ones picked. I am not sure why they were picked, since they were the first ones I did with my pen and not the ink, and I used my fingers and wrist in both.The quote in the left picture is a song lyric from Emilie Autumn's song "Opheliac" and ode to Ophelia from Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and her daughters who commit suicide. Angelspit's lyrics were used for most of my pieces and in the second one the quote comes from their song "Let them Eat Distortion" a cyberpunkish commentary to our societies gluttony. I guess I am more curious now to why these were chosen in the first place

"Chasing Demons You Simpelton"- More Lines

I only had two line drawings worth looking at in my opinion and while the one above is the one I choose to alter in class It is my favorite, maybe because I saw little smoke monsters circling in a mass and choose to give them a glow for lack of a red marker.
This is the one I snapped 19 pics of some of them will l be below.

"Footprints In Permanent Sand"- The Beggining Of Mark Making

Yes Yes, late late that will never do, but at least its done. These are my line works done with music for an hour, I spent 20 mins on each, and listened to different artist while doing them. I wanted to keep the same sentiment of non verbal music, or in my case music that I knew wouldn't have lyrics to interfere with the music I was supposed to derive my emotions from.
I listen to songs by Pogo, Imogen Heap, and Utada Hikaru.

"Death on the Spot"- Human dots thus the end

I could tell some were rather peeved that our focus on dots lasted a month, and as time waged on the patience we all have for them was at wits end. However we were warned by Kathy Kelly that we would have an extended stay with dots, so the only ones we can blame is our short fused temperance for long repetitive things. Ah one on the many quirks of humanity...

So we say goodbye to dots, I doubt for good, for we have outstayed our welcome, and the guest rooms will forever have our stench entrenched within its walls. I have posted below pictures of my human dot group. I decided not to photoshop on these because I like the human element in them even if it looks messy. I guess that the point of having humans do things, they are not perfect, nor should they be. I don't really have much to say about them. My group included Bekah, Ellen, Jessel, and Kelsey, we were productive and efficient enough the first time due to planning and not just jumping in to waste our time. for the similarity one I changed my final dot, so in the pictures I chose the new one which I am led to believe might explain the concept better than my previous one. These pictures were taken from above on a ladder sort of a birds eye view if you may. The natural light helped the most.











I guess I had not even put up my list of ideas that we had come up with before hand so here:

Ten ideas to be dots
-Captain Morgan Pose with dot beneath
-Hold dots above heads
-In black clothes curled up as dots
-Paint our faces black for dots(I obviously objected to this)
-Black eye shadow around eyes as dots
-Hats as dots
-Black lipstick and use our lips as dots
-Black t-shirts as dots
-Cardboard cutouts of dots
-Use black sheets to cover in as dots

For the white space
-Making a giant white fan/ or sheet (still not sure how that would work)
-A plain white sheet
-White make-up (Ellen couldn't get away from the make-up :)
-Use the white wall

"These Legoland Empires, Choking out my now."- Modular Madness the end

I honestly felt like my mental process always has to be explained. I just make associations faster than most people I guess, and because of this I have always been accepting of the ambiguity of my words, passions, art, and life. Because of this I have become extremely long winded, always feeling like I have to over explain with dramatic analogies, because people never seem to get it the first time like I do. Unfortunately this also makes me have a short attention span for non-novel information. I have realized with these projects that is imperative that you can grasp a overall purpose for each one of them, without doing so you create a project that even you cannot fully grasp what you were trying to do. What I understood was that with inspiration from the atom, the singular building block of everything, we were supposed to emphasize how one object, any object, in a massive amount can become more than we would aspire it to be alone. I thought PVC pipping would be a great example of this, not to mention easy because they fit together, but the outcome was something I was not focusing on, and what I mean by that is that I did not have a particular idea of what I wanted viewers to think. I knew I wanted to build tower like structures, that was it. I liked the idea of the panic that someone might see when they looked at it, I was in now way telling the viewer that is what they must see. I have more expectation out of people that to think they are dumb enough to be swayed by only one point of view, I believe it is natural to come up with many different ideas to what something could be. Call it ingenuity.

On to the piece itself. I could spend forever talking about what I was trying to get at, but I don't think it even matter. You will see what you want to see, hopefully however you will come up with more than one conclusion.

"Dot Dot Done- No not really"-Critques

Dead tired now, but must get this done. With the dot dot dot critiques I chose Liz Evans. I mostly chose this one because I liked its simple clean design, one that focused more on the dots than the texture. Its texture takes advantage of the closure concept the dots are representing. It is simple, in a good way, the texture of the dots doesn't compete with the newspaper yet makes the statement of the dots being the important feature of the piece. I believe however to improve this piece, of centering the formation of the dots and the texture that goes with it can add more drama, to a piece that, although I do not, others might find boring.Mine was critiqued by Liz Evans, and her high points in this piece was the placement of the dots. I liked the placement as well and believe that is what gave this piece the meaning of proximity, strangely enough I cannot remember exactly which concept it is. An improvement she mentioned was making the dots more circular which I do agree with, but when I look at it now the rough edges of it goes well with the rough edges of the texture.