\n
\u201cIt\u2019s as if the artist is the animal and the painting is the record
\nof the artist\u2019s tracks through space and time \u2026 I did not want just a
\nrecord, but rather the actual movement.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018A Thousand Years\u2019 and \u2018A Hundred Years\u2019 were first exhibited at the warehouse show \u2018Gambler\u2019, in 1990. \u2018A Thousand Years\u2019 is acknowledged by the artist to be one of the most important of his career. <\/p>\n
In both works, the vitrine is split in half by a glass wall: a hole
\nin this partition allows newly hatched flies from a box reminiscent of a
\n die in one half, to fly into the other where an Insect-O-Cutor hangs.
\nThe corpses of the flies inside the vitrine accumulate whilst the works
\nare on exhibition. In \u2018A Thousand Years\u2019, a decaying cow\u2019s head is
\npresented beneath the fly-killer. <\/p>\n
Hirst describes how, having come round to the idea of the validity of \u201cnew art\u201d and having made the spot paintings and the \u2018Medicine Cabinets\u2019,
\n he felt he had lost something, \u201cin terms of the belief I had in whether
\n [art] was real or not.\u201d Feeling the need to make \u201csomething about something
\n important\u201d, and having already worked with flies, maggots and
\nbutterflies, whilst at Goldsmiths, he decided to create a \u201clife cycle in
\n a box.\u201d The structure was partially inspired by American minimalism and the
\nindustrial materials Hirst had seen in the work of Grenville Davey and
\nTony Cragg. The shape of the vitrine drew from Francis Bacon\u2019s technique
\n of framing his figures within box shapes. Of the influence of Bacon\u2019s
\nframes to his work, Hirst has explained: \u201cit\u2019s a doorway, it\u2019s a window;
\n it\u2019s two-dimensional, it\u2019s three-dimensional; he\u2019s thinking about the
\nglass reflecting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having planned the works for almost two years, Hirst had to borrow
\nmoney from friends in order to finance their fabrication. Despite this,
\nhe insisted on making two, \u201clike bookends\u201d.
\n Throughout his career, pairs and duplicates have remained an important
\nelement to Hirst\u2019s work. He states: \u201cIt undermines this idea of being
\nunique. There\u2019s a comfort I get from it that I love. Each part of a pair
\n has its own life, independent of the other, but they live together.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018A Thousand Years\u2019 and \u2018A Hundred Years\u2019 synthesize two forces
\ncentral to Hirst\u2019s work: the desire to create an aesthetically
\nsuccessful visual display, and an exploration into the deep profundities
\n of life and death. Although admitting to having a \u201cFrankenstein moment\u201d
\n of horror at the death of the flies, the use of living creatures
\nenabled Hirst to incorporate an element of movement into the
\nworks. After studying Naum Gabo, Hirst found that the flies successfully
\n satisfied his ambition to \u201csuspend things without strings or wires and have them constantly change pattern in space\u201d. <\/p>\n
The artist Lucian Freud stated that, with \u2018A Thousand Years\u2019 being
\none of his earliest exhibited pieces, Hirst had perhaps \u201cstarted with
\nthe final act\u201d. Explaining that, \u201cyour whole life could be like
\n points in space, like nearly nothing,\u201d Hirst provokes a reconsideration
\n of how we respond to death in the works; the fate of the flies at the
\nhands of a machine that is commonplace even in vegetarian restaurants,
\nis rendered uncomfortable by the gallery setting. Of the thematic prevalence of death in his work, Hirst explains: \u201cYou
\ncan frighten people with death or an idea of their own mortality, or it
\ncan actually give them vigour.\u201d<\/p>\n
by Damien Hirst<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s as if the artist is the animal and the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12749],"tags":[3447,1165,108,582,1094,3446,1145,2490,361,3150,371,1937,930,3445,2338,2516,3,123,3448],"class_list":["post-2577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tumblr","tag-a-thousand-years","tag-alife","tag-animals-2","tag-art","tag-blood","tag-born","tag-cow","tag-damien-hirst","tag-death","tag-fly","tag-food","tag-francis-bacon","tag-installation","tag-maggots","tag-minimalism","tag-performing-arts","tag-quote-of-the-day","tag-sculpture","tag-survival"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/p>\n