The exhibition “Live forever (for a moment)” reaches the Jumex Museum of Mexico City with the work of the British Damien Hirstthat’s why we tell you why this artist is so controversial.
According to what was reported by the venue, the exhibition of Damien Hirst will offer a complete vision of the artist’s work between 1986 and 2019, with 57 works including installations, sculptures and paintings.
Curated by Ann Gallagher and the artist, the exhibition includes some of the series Hirst’s most iconicsuch as Natural History, Spin Paintings, Medicine Cabinets, Cherry Blossoms, as well as dot and butterfly paintings.
Why is Damien Hirst so controversial?
Damien Hirst He first came to the attention of the London public in 1988, when he conceived and curated the group exhibition Freeze during his second year at Goldsmiths, the art school of the University of London.
His works have achieved international recognition as one of the most popular contemporary artists, but at the same time he is one of the most criticized and questioned.
Between 1991 and 2014 the artist submerged animals such as sheep, sharks, cows, pigs, bulls, zebras, bears and fish in formalin creating a series of works that explore life and death.
The animal activists have been their great enemies since there is an investigation that indicates that 913 thousand 450 animals, including 912 thousand insects, flies and butterflies, are part of his work, so they consider that the suffering, sacrifice and mutilation of animals have been used to build his great fortune.
Throughout his career Damien Hirst has been pointed out as a fraud, for example, the critic Antonio García Villarán describes it as a hampartistthat is, a pseudo-artist who only pretends to make art to sell it at stratospheric prices.
The criticism arises since the Hirst has revealed that he has people who are in charge of making his works, in 2007 he confessed: “I barely sold one of the works, I used the money to pay people to do them, because they are much better than me at it. “I get bored and I’m very impatient.”
Years later, in 2012, he received one of the strongest criticisms from the renowned artist David Hockney, who, following an exhibition in which he presented 1,375 works of colored dots made by his assistants, stated that his way of doing things It was an insult.
Hirst has also been accused of plagiarism to the Australian artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye and to those of other indigenous artists.
Other artists such as Colleen Wolstenholme, John LeKay and Lori Precius have also accused him of plagiarism. Even in the year 2000, Hirst agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to stop legal action by the makers of a toy that resembled his “Hymn” sculpture, similar to “Temple,” on display at Houghton Hall.
Hirst’s most recent controversy
An investigation carried out by the newspaper “The Guardian” in 2024 revealed that three sculptures by Damien Hirst, created by preserving animals in formaldehyde, were dated to the 1990s, but They were actually manufactured in 2017.
It is a dove, a shark and two calves that have been exhibited in galleries in Hong Kong, New York, Munich, London and Oxford in recent years, but all were created by his employees in a workshop in England in 2017.
