Hirst gives birth to giant bronze foetus

[Merlion]

This is a gigantic piece by Damien Hirst. Can't really say whether I like it just based on this article and the photo supplied. What do you think?

Hirst gives birth to giant bronze foetus
The Times May 23, 2006

A HUGE statue by Damien Hirst was unveiled outside the Royal Academy in London yesterday as part of the institution’s annual Summer Exhibition, which will open on June 12.

The 13.5-tonne bronze, Virgin Mother, shows a woman with her skin cut away to reveal a foetus in her womb. It is one of three versions of the sculpture. The first was installed on Park Avenue, New York, to a mixed response from critics. [snip]

The 11m (35ft) work, which copies the pose of The Little Dancer by Degas, is made from 18 pieces of bronze held together by a steel skeleton.

Rungwe Kingdon, whose Pangolin Editions foundry cast the work, said that it was one of the biggest bronzes in the world. It took 18 months to build and is too heavy to be made of bronze alone without buckling at the ankles. [snip]

Full article with a photo of the artwork can be found here (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2192395,00.html).

Here (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/05/23/nhirst23.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/05/23/ixuknews.html) is another news article from the Telegraph newspaper, UK, with a better picture.

By the way, I once read a book about this Pangolin foundry, UK, and I was quite impressed by their skills and their facilities for very big works. Their price would be high of course.

[fused]

A beautifully executed bronze casting that just might exceed all of Damian Hirst's intentions. The title Virgin Mother pretty much says it all if the flayed anatomy doesn't, matched by the Times Online's "Hirst shocks with giant bronze foetus" banner just in case people don't notice. Obviously his fifteen minutes aren't over yet.

Art as a curious specticle in the headlines once again isn't too big of a surprise. The edition will be three times a virgin once the edition is complete. Will there be additional controversy once the title has a chance to sink in? The "Da Vinci Code" may not have to go it alone.

The BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5004844.stm) has it on their site also and here's a link to The Summer Exhibition (http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/?lid=610) that runs from June 12th thru August 20th 2006
at The Royal Academy of Art.

[Merlion]

Thanks Fused for the additional links.

As I said, for me I find the available pictures of the statue not good enough to judge objectively whether I like it and find it good. Normally when doing this I try not to be influenced by how famous or infamous is the artist, and how much good or bad publicity it has generated.

About Hirst, I notice another news item about him, just unveiling plans for a new artwork that is billed to attract publicity, a diamond studded sculpture that not many other artists can finance. It is clear he tries to keep himself in the news all the time.

Hirst unveils plans for diamond skull sculpture

UK artist Damien Hirst is working on his most expensive project yet – and someone's going to have to pay as much as £10 million to foot the bill.

Most of the money is going on 8,500 diamonds which form part of his latest sculpture, which he calls For The Love Of God.

It consists of a life-size human skull cast in platinum which will be entirely encased in diamonds. [snip]

Full article found here (http://arts.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1165911.php/Hirst_unveils_plans_for_diamond_skull_sculpture).

[Cantab]

In the 1990s, Hirst seemed to have his artistic identity under control, and produced a body of work that was important and coherent. Since 2000, though, I wonder if he doesn’t look a little bit like an artist in search of a subject and having problems with progression (now the God/religion stuff has been foregrounded he seems just a little bit silly). He is also showing very little interest in the medium as such. None of this work looks like sculpture to me – it looks more like ideas, given form. The most complex thing about the diamond head is probably raising the cash, and for Hirst that is probably not so difficult at all. As for the range of media – I have a certain respect for artists who adopt a medium and become part of its development – Picasso and painting (the application of paint); Hockney and the print (including photographic and inkjet); Caro and iron/steel. That commitment is missing here, and it reminds us that Hirst’s focus is always partly exploitative. He USES the medium, but has no fundamental love of it. For me, the medium is sacred (stone, in my case), and the work has to reflect that respect and be inherent in the work.
Having said that, the Virgin Mother piece echoes earlier work in which he showed us the insides of a 'mother and child' cow/calf, held in a kind of eternal stasis through the use of formaldehyde. This opening up of the female form reminds us of a certain interest he has in biological creativity, and the relation of religious images and ideas (mother/child; the eternal) to that biological reality. And the diamond head relates back to the death theme........

[oddist]

This is interesting...

Moore experimented with the "mother/child" theme in an abstract fashion...

Now we have Hirst and Edwards doing the "mother/child" theme realistically.

Is this saying something about the direction of figurative art?

Or is reality shocking for most viewers?

[Cantab]

I've just seen some footage on TV about the 'Virgin Mother' bronze at the RA. An astonishing piece. One side of the figure, the fully fleshed out body of a pregnant woman; the other cut away to reveal the inner workings/muscular structure of the body. Very much in line with earlier work by Hirst that uses the 'formal' conventions of the medical dummy. Puzzling, though, that he has used Degas' 'Dancer' as the main influence on the fleshed out side. Any ideas why?

[fused]

I suppose the Edgar Degas art reference could be there to insure the figure isn't mistaken as an oversized study of human anatomy for the visually impaired.

Hirst Incorporated from The Guardian (http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1801572,00.html)


At 41, Damien Hirst is no longer a 'young British artist'. So what should we call him? A middle-aged businessman? He still pickles the odd shark, but he seems every bit as interested in his £3m country house, his £100m fortune and the danger that it all might slip away. [...]

Damien Hirst: master of all he surveys; worth, so he claims, £100m; the most powerful man in the art world (according to ArtReview magazine, anyway); property magnate; collector. Artist.

It is 18 years since he attracted attention as the Goldsmith's student who curated Freeze - a show of work by his mates that demonstrated the entrepreneurial spirit of a bunch of artists who refused to hang around waiting to be discovered.

These days he employs 65 people, including a full-time business manager, Frank Dunphy, who has become famous in his own right. When Hirst speaks, in his curlicued, erratic, scuttling sentences, he nearly always says "we", not "I". "Well, it's such a big operation," he says. "I tend to mean me and Frank. Or me and Science." (Science is the company that handles his affairs.) The "most powerful" tag, sensibly, he laughs off - "It's Top of the Pops, isn't it? It's funny. When you've been number one you can only go down, can't you? We were once the 'most invited' in Tatler. But we never go anywhere."

And yet despite his army, his stately home in Gloucestershire, his land in Mexico, his properties in Lambeth and Devon, his art's seemingly unassailable market value (Away From the Flock, Divided, 1995, sold last month for £1.8m, his saleroom record), and his sheer celebrity, he does not feel safe. There's Hirst's old friend, fear of death, to contend with. And then there is all that money - burdensome, bringer of both responsibility and distraction, horribly fragile. "The whole thing could fall apart with a war," he says. "I always think it can be taken away from you at any moment. People talk about safe investments, but Lloyd's Bank could collapse. Banks have collapsed in our lifetime."

via Edward Winkleman's blog (http://edwardwinkleman.blogspot.com/2006/06/hatin-how-they-love-them-youngins-open.html)

[Studioinde]

I think that if the money was causing me that much worry, distraction, and downright paranoia, i'd give it away without a second thought.......I feel sorry for the poor bastard.

[makmax]

The Virgin Mother is not at all shocking nor religious. Why would it be? There are literally no gods here and no cows. Independence, Power and Purpose seem closer. Although the scale plays a part as does vertical distortion of perspective, it's gigantism is more than just impressive. Go and see it if you can. Forget the photographs.