Sensation, 2003. Acrylic paint on bronze. 198.1 × 316.2 × 165.1 cm (77 7/8 × 124 1/2 × 65 in). Signed ‘D. Hirst’ and numbered of 3 on the base. This work is from an edition of 3.
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PROVENANCE White Cube, London
EXHIBITIED London, Tate Britain, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, 3 March–31 May 2004 (another example exhibited) Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, The Agony and the Ecstasy: Selected Works from 1989–2004, 31 October 2004–31 January 2005 Miami Beach, Bass Museum, Art Basel O
LITERATURE In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, exh. cat., Tate Britain, London, 2004, pp. 78–79 (another example illustrated) The Agony and the Ecstasy: Selected Works from 1989–2004, exh. cat., Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, 2004, pp. 46–47 (illustrated)
Throughout his controversial career, Damien Hirst has continually pushed the boundaries of art and science in his exploration of humanity. While Hirst’s paintings seemingly appropriate life through the representation of death or medicine, his sculptures often dwell on the harmony and integrity of human and animal anatomy, exploring the simplicity of its mechanics and the complexity of its perpetuation. Sensation, executed in 2003, is a powerful combination of these paradoxical concerns. The present lot is an oversized painted bronze sculpture based on an academic anatomical model, of the type most likely to be found in a school science laboratory. It depicts a cross-section of a chunk of human flesh, revealing the labyrinthine hidden workings of the body’s largest organ – the skin. This work follows on from Hymn, 1999–2000, which is similar in nature, although the subject matter is an anatomical model of a male figure said to have been based on his son’s Humbrol Young Scientist Anatomy Set, an educational toy designed by Norman Emms. Directly enlarging such an anatomical model undermines accepted concepts of figurative sculpture, as does the use of painted bronze. Bronze is freighted with connotations of traditional statuary, and to paint it goes against the art-historical norm, much as radically enlarging the proportions of an anatomical model goes against the scientific norm. Hirst sees the medium of painted bronze as being poised between painting and sculpture: neither a painting nor a sculpture, but a painted object. The delineated boundaries between painting and sculpture are broken down, so that both exist within a single work of art. “Hirst subverts the humanism and allegorical anthropomorphism of traditional sculpture, indicating and recalling with surgical precision what occurs continually and without knowing, within our body, exposed and in turn heedless to the ravages of history: cells that multiply and die, blood that flows, glands that secrete, lungs that exhale and inhale air, the liver that filters the spoils of the everyday hunt, white corpuscles that attack infection. All this occurs parallel to, and in the absence of, any respite from what is going on outside us and despite us. But at the same time, in an increasingly accelerated, technological, virtual, and robotized world, anatomical exposition re-solidifies reality around the verification of the senses, around error, around the degenerative aspect of the body. And, as in all Hirst’s work, it conveys, mirrors, and excavates life’s tortuous journey between fear and desire.” (Mario Codognato in Damien Hirst, exhibition catalogue, Museo Archelogico Nazionale Napoli, Naples, 2005, p. 46)