Acquisitions
ARTIST ROOMS: The d'Offay Donation
Damien Hirst (born 1965)
One room featuring five works: the largest early spot painting in the series, Controlled Substances Key Painting, 1994; the important formaldehyde piece, Away from the Flock, 1995; the significant recent triptych, Trinity – Pharmacology, Physiology, Pathology, 2000; the very large butterfly diptych, Monument to the Living and the Dead, 2006; and a photograph, With Dead Head, 1981/1991.
Damien Hirst is the most prominent artist to have emerged from the British art scene in the 1990s. His role as an artist and curator has proved fundamental in the development of the group, mainly from Goldsmiths College, that became internationally known as ‘the YBAs’. Hirst’s work forces viewers to question their understanding of issues such as the fragility of life, our reluctance to confront death and decay and other dilemmas of human existence. He is best known for his ‘Natural History’ works – large-scale sculptures featuring dead animals floating in Minimalist-looking vitrines – but also for his mirrored pharmacy cabinets lined with shelves full of evenly spaced drug bottles, pills, sea shells or cigarette butts, and his paintings, which he produces in series. An example of these, included in The d’Offay Donation, is the early Controlled Substances Key Painting (Spot 4a): a canvas where a grid of dots of different colours is accompanied by letters in alphabetical order that seem to dissect and reorganise the very matter of painting into cells. Also included in the Donation is the key work Away from the Flock, an edition of which was first exhibited in Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away which Hirst curated for the Serpentine Gallery in 1994. This work, which features a sheep floating in formaldehyde, represents an important step in Hirst’s practice: on this occasion, rather than the safety we might experience when contemplating a dead shark, what resonates in this clinical display of dead matter is the religious theme of the death of an innocent lamb. The large butterfly diptych Monument to the Living and the Dead (2006) was made specifically for The d’Offay Donation.
Controlled Substances Key Painting (Spot 4a) 1994
Acrylic on canvas
1220 x 1220 mm
Photo courtesy Gagosian Gallery, London
© Damien Hirst
Away from the Flock 1995
Mixed media
960 x 1490 x 510 mm
From an edition of 3
Photo courtesy Anthony d'Offay Ltd
© Damien Hirst
Trinity - Pharmacology, Physiology, Pathology 2000
Mixed media
Central vitrine: 2740 x 1830 x 350 mm
Two side vitrines, each: 2130 x 1520 x 350 mm
Photo courtesy Anthony d'Offay Ltd
© Damien Hirst
Artists
- Diane Arbus
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- Georg Baselitz
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- Joseph Beuys
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- Vija Celmins
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- Ellen Gallagher
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- Gilbert & George
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- Johan Grimonprez
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- Richard Hamilton
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- Ian Hamilton Finlay
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- Damien Hirst
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- Jenny Holzer
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- Alex Katz
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- Anselm Kiefer
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- Jeff Koons
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- Jannis Kounellis
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- Sol LeWitt
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- Richard Long
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- Robert Mapplethorpe
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- Agnes Martin
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- Mario Merz
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- Ron Mueck
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- Bruce Nauman
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- Charles Ray
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- Gerhard Richter
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- Ed Ruscha
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- Robert Ryman
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- Robert Therrien
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- Cy Twombly
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- Bill Viola
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- Andy Warhol
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- Lawrence Weiner
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- Francesca Woodman
