Damien Hirst Biography
Damien Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur, and collector of fine art. He is a member of the Young British Artists (YBAs) movement that dominated the UK art scene in the 1990s. In the 2020 Sunday Times Rich List, Hirst is considered to be the UK’s richest living artist, with a fortune of $384 million.
How old is Damien Hirst? – Age
He is 58 years old as of 7 June 2022. He was born in 1965 in Bristol, United Kingdom. His real name is Damien Steven Hirst.
Damien Hirst Family – Education
Hirst was raised in Leeds with his Irish mother, a Citizens Advice Bureau worker. He never met his father; when Hirst was two, his mother married his stepfather, and the pair separated ten years later. His stepfather was a mechanic, according to reports. His mother reported that she lost control of her son while he was young, as he was arrested for shoplifting twice.
Damien Hirst Partner
Hirst lived with his American partner, Maia Norman, from 1992 until 2012, with whom he has three boys, born in 1995, 2000, and 2005. Hirst has spent the majority of his time since becoming a father in his secluded farmhouse near Combe Martin in Devon. Hirst and Norman were never married, though Hirst referred to Norman as his “common-law wife” at the time.
Damien Hirst Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $700 Million. Hirst’s art, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, raised US$198 million at his auction in 2008. It is claimed to be the most money ever raised by a live artist. Hirst is widely regarded as the wealthiest living artist. Hirst was ranked equal 238 on the annual Sunday Times Rich List of the wealthiest people in the United Kingdom and Ireland in 2009, with a net worth of £235 million. In the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List, Hirst’s fortune was evaluated at £215 million, making him Britain’s wealthiest artist.
Damien Hirst Restaurants
Hirst collaborated with chef Marco Pierre White in the restaurant “Quo Vadis” for a brief period of time. His most well-known restaurant engagement was Pharmacy, which closed in 2004 in Notting Hill, London. Hirst had only rented his art piece to the restaurant, so he was able to reclaim it and sell it at a Sotheby’s auction for almost £11 million. Some of the art had been altered, for example, by signing it before the sale.
Hirst is a co-owner of 11 The Quay, a seafood restaurant in the English seaside town of Ilfracombe. Damien Hirst created the decor of his new restaurant Pharmacy 2 at London’s Newport Street Gallery in 2016.
Damien Hirst Shark
The Shark in Formaldehyde in a Vitrine, by Hirst and titled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, sold for £50,000. A commissioned fisherman had caught the shark in Australia and paid £6,000 for it. In a Thousand Years was also included in the exhibit. Hirst was up for the Turner Prize that year because of the show, but Grenville Davey won it.
The large tiger shark in this artwork is suspended in formaldehyde. The tank wherein the shark is drifting makes the deception of the creature being sliced into three pieces because of the compartment seeming to be three separate segments. The work was made in 1991, and since then, the shark’s body, which is preserved in formaldehyde, has been slowly eaten away, showing signs of decay. According to Hirst, the shark’s formaldehyde is the result of decay and death.
The work’s minimalistic qualities and “stereotypical” death theme, according to some critics, are too bland for such a prestigious artist. “But the famous shark, bound to its coffee bar-existentialist title – The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living – seems ever more dilapidated, more fairground sideshow, with every dowdy showing,” one critic wrote. It has lost any cliched threat it might have once represented. Luke White, another critic of art, disagrees, stating that prior to the turn of the century, people saw sharks as “…ugly and dangerous, but they found them instead exhilarating, fascinating, and sublime.” White argues that sharks have been viewed as transcendent, awe-inspiring beings for centuries. As a creature that is both a metaphorical representation of our minds and the embodiment of sublimitude, sharks help convey the significance of how unique our thoughts really are.
Damien Hirst For the Love of God
Damien Hirst’s work For the Love of God was completed in 2007. It is made out of a platinum cast of an 18th-century human skull adorned with 8,601 immaculate diamonds, including the Skull Star Diamond, a pear-shaped pink diamond positioned in the forehead. The teeth on the skull are genuine and were purchased by Hirst in London. The artwork serves as a memento mori, or a reminder of the viewer’s mortality.
The piece was described as “out of this world, almost celestial” by art historian Rudi Fuchs in 2007. It declares triumph over deterioration. It also shows death as something incomparably more unrelenting. The diamond skull is glory itself when compared to the sorrowful anguish of a vanitas scenario.” The sculpture, which cost £12 million to create, had its debut at the White Cube gallery in London in the show Beyond Belief, with an asking price of £50 million. This was the most money ever paid for a single piece by a live artist. Hirst declared in January 2022 that he still co-owned the sculpture and that it was in storage in London.