Shark by Dean Crawford

Author:Dean Crawford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books

Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991, mixed media including preserved shark.

Death, decay, the sublime were the themes of the British art that defined the end of the 20th century; the horror of the shark swimming towards you through formaldehyde . . . The sublime was the aesthetic of these years, this art – and the sublime, as the 18th century politician and thinker Edmund Burke argued, is about power. The origin of the sublime, for him, lies in our awe before a majestic, divine authority. Today it is an awe of art itself, or at least a desire to experience that awe; to be knocked over by art, to be kicked in the teeth.17

What sets Hirst’s shark apart from his other animals is the danger it projects. Without this threat, we feel no awe, only guilt and shock at the carnage.

Hirst seeks a direct connection to the public and tries to evoke a visceral response.18 Perhaps he regrets our treatment of lambs and cows. But his sympathy does not seem to extend to sharks: after a period of some obfuscation, it has been revealed that Hirst’s shark supplier is Vic Hislop, the world’s most notorious shark hunter. Hirst bought his original tiger shark from Hislop for $10,000.19 He has since purchased three more from him: two freshly caught tiger sharks along with a great white that Hislop said he had in the freezer. The 1.5-metre tiger shark that Hirst sold to the South Korean dealer for more than $5 million was something that Hislop had tossed in as a ‘freebie’. Asked whether Hirst wasn’t self-franchising or profiteering from his old inspirations, Hirst’s manager, Frank Dunphy replied, ‘Look, Damien likes doing sharks.’20

Damien Hirst and newly repaired shark.

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