Books by Damien Hirst

Hirst's Psalm paintings allude to Gothic stained glass windows and the circular patterns of Buddhist mandalasThis beautifully illustrated book constitutes a comprehensive survey of Damien Hirst's Psalm paintings. The 150 works in the series are made up of iridescent butterfly wings and paint on canvas, which combine to form kaleidoscopic patterns reminiscent of Gothic stained glass windows. Dating from 2008, the paintings address some of Hirst's most enduring and important themes: beauty, art, belief, life and death. Each of the fully illustrated paintings is accompanied by the Old Testament prayer from which its title is derived, the text rendered on images of individually selected marble samples. Also included is a complete list of works, and essays by art writers Michael Bracewell and Amie Corry. In his essay, Bracewell writes: "The Psalm paintings can't help but bring together, in literal form, such fundamental concepts as beauty, and power over death through prayer and belief, while simultaneously seeming to propose solely their own--albeit spectacular--abstraction. As they take their place within the greater canon of Hirst's art, these paintings extend his fascination with natural history and the potentially synonymous relationships between life, death, art and 'beauty, ' and the language of Christian faith and religion." The Complete Psalm Paintings is an exquisite companion to one of Hirst's most beautiful series.Damien Hirst was born in Bristol in 1965. He first came to public attention in 1988 when he conceived and curated Freeze, an exhibition of his own work and that of his contemporaries staged in an abandoned London warehouse. Since then Hirst has become widely recognized as one of the most influential artists of his generation. Alongside over 80 solo exhibitions, he has worked on numerous curatorial projects. In 2008, Hirst took the unprecedented step of bypassing gallery involvement by selling 244 new works at a Sotheby's, London auction. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1995 and received a major solo retrospective at Tate Modern, London. He lives in Devon, England.

"A revealing collection of quotations from world-renowned artist Damien Hirst. Hirst-isms is a collection of quotations-bold, surprising, often humorous, and always insightful-from celebrated artist Damien Hirst, whose controversial work explores the connections between art, religion, science, life, and death. Emerging in the 1990s as a leading member of the Young British Artists (YBAs), Hirst first became famous and gained a reputation as a provocateur with a series of artworks featuring dead and sometimes dissected animals (including a shark, sheep, and cow) preserved in glass tanks filled with formaldehyde.Gathered from interviews and other primary sources and organized by subject, these quotations explore Hirst's early years, family life, and the beginnings of his fascination with art; the major themes of his work; his influences and heroes; his motivation; his process and the boundary-pushing production of his work; and his thoughts on the art world, fame, and money. The result is a comprehensive and nuanced book that sheds new light on a fascinating and important contemporary artist.Select quotations from the book:"The less I feel like an artist, the better I feel.""I like it when people love my art. I like it when people hate my art. I just don't want them to ignore my art.""Painting's like the most fabulous illusion, because there's nothing at stake. Except yourself.""I'm interested in the confusion between art and life, I like it when the world gets in the way.""Sometimes you have to step over the edge to know where it is.""

Anna Coliva e Mario Codognato, curatori della mostra e autori, tra gli altri, dei saggi in catalogo, esponendo Damien Hirst nella Galleria Borghese, hanno compiuto un¿operazione culturale straordinaria. L¿artista inglese, assoluta e controversa celebrità del mondo artistico contemporaneo, non ha realizzato un progetto site-specific per il museo, eppure le sculture prodotte nel corso degli anni e la nuova serie dei dipinti Color Space sembrano assolutamente e indubitabilmente concepiti per legarsi alle opere, ai colori, alla materia antica e moderna che la Galleria Borghese conserva, e di cui è integralmente tessuta.

This exquisite hardback volume, boasting a ribbed leather spine, presents the second collection of a series of drawings on paper by Damien Hirst (born 1965), rendered in a range of mediums including silverpoint, charcoal and ink. The drawings form part of Hirst's most ambitious project to date, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, presented at the Pinault collection's two Venetian museums--the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana--from April to December 2017. The exhibition marked the first time in the Collection's history that both museums had been dedicated to the work of a single artist.

Relics constitutes the new and largestever retrospective of Damien Hirst's work, including both iconic, and previously unseen artworks, spanning 27 years of the artistscareer. If you own one book on the work of this artist, this is the latest and most comprehensive. For the first time Hirst's two diamond skulls, "For the Love of God" (2007) and "For Heaven's Sake" (2008), are pictured together. Explaining, "art's about life and it can't really be about anything else ... there isn't anything else," Hirst's work investigates and challenges contemporary belief systems, anddissects the tensions and uncertainties at the heart of human experience.

The Visual Candy paintings were made between 1992 and 1994.The works showcase the ways in which Damien Hirst used the signifier of candy during the early 1990's, exploring questions of pure aesthetics. Hirst says they were created as a direct riposte to an art critic who had dismissed Hirst's Spot Paintings as "just visual candy.' Addressing the viewer on a deliberately emotionaland instinctive level, these works, abetted by their exuberant titles, among them Some Fun (1993) and Dippy Dappy Dabby (1993), set out to question the implication that aesthetically pleasing art is inherently insignificant.While ostensibly abstract, the paintings in fact depict medicinal pills, and can be seen as a stylised depiction of the psychological effects of happy, mood-enhancing drugs. Hirst once described how, "in every painting there is a subliminal sense of unease... the colours project so much joy it's hard to feel it, but it's there. The horror underlying everything," In this context, the Visual Candy paintings, despite their surface optimism, posses a disquieting undercurrent of tension and darkness - born from an awareness of the inevitable low that follows any high. Hirst once said that "art is about life - there isn't anything else.'

David Bailey, born in London in 1938, is one of the most successful photographers of his generation. By the 1960s his work, especially for "Vogue", had already made him a cult figure. This title features 130 photographs of Damien Hirst taken by Bailey during a single shoot lasting eight minutes.