- 8
Damien Hirst
Description
- Damien Hirst
- Untitled A
- glass, painted MDF, ramin, steel, plastic, aluminium and pharmaceutical packaging
- 76.2 by 101.6 by 22.8cm.; 30 by 40 by 9in.
- Executed in 1992.
Provenance
Private Collection, USA
Haunch of Venison, London
Private Collection
BLAIN|SOUTHERN, London
Exhibited
Literature
Condition
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
Catalogue Note
Untitled A, along with the other works in the Medicine Cabinet series, combines two of Hirst’s key interests and abiding areas of investigation: science and mortality. The very presence of the serried ranks of medicine bottles, creams and pills hints at the fragility of the human body, whilst acting as a concomitant paean to the remarkable medical advances made during the course of the twentieth century. The darker connotations suggested by the Medicine Cabinets are thus alleviated by the inherent presence of hope and the possibility of being able to mitigate pain and suffering. Full of items that have the potential to heal, the simple medicine cabinet is here imbued with life-changing qualities, echoing Hirst’s oft-evoked statement that “Art should heal.” Untitled A thus becomes an almost magical repository of seeming immortality: a fount of miraculous wonder. Hirst remembers a moment in a pharmacy with his mother, picking up on the trusting faith of the general population in the power of pills and other modern medical inventions to cure all ills, an all-encompassing panacea: “I’d been trying to explain loads of work to my mum, about what I’d been doing. She’s an open-minded person, but she had a completely closed mind about it… And I was with my mum in the chemist: she was getting a prescription, and it was, like, complete trust on the one level in something she’s equally in the dark about… It’s just completely packaging and formal sculpture and organised shapes. My mum was looking at the same kind of stuff in the chemist’s and believing in it completely. And then, when looking at it in an art gallery, completely not believing in it. As far as I could see, it was the same thing… I really loved the idea of art maybe, you know, curing people.” (The artist cited in: Gordon Burn & Damien Hirst, On the Way to Work, London 2001, p. 25). Ultimately Untitled A can be viewed as a work of elegiac beauty and intense feeling: an emotive and moving celebration of the universal ability to allow hope to triumph over despair within the human mind.