Damien Hirst's Stolen Artwork

Damien Hirst is literally like the poster boy for modern, controversial art. He rose to fame on the back of the 'Young British Artists' group in the 90's and has been annoying critics ever since.

Whether you love him or hate him though, he's richer than you and pulled in one of (if not) the highest number of visitors to the Tate Modern last year for an exhibition of his work.

In fact, he is the richest artist alive today. The likes of the similarly controversial Saatchi (but for different reasons) supposedly gave him £50,000 to produce something - anything - and the result was a shark in preservative fluid...

So, it's not surprising that someone broke into a gallery on Monday this week and took nothing other than two Damien Hirst pieces. What they took had a value of about £33,000 and was taken from a small and new little Gallery in the North Kensington area. The alarm did not sound and obviously the bloke who runs the gallery is gutted...

The two pieces that was stolen. The top, larger one is called Pyronin Y and the bottom, diddier one is called Oleoylsarcosine.

It is likely that the thief was capitalising on the lack of security measures the gallery had and the fact that they were exhibiting these pieces only temporarily. The fact that only a normal front-door separated the outside from the expensive pieces of art made it easy and quick.

You've got to laugh ain't you - it's going to be so hard to locate them considering they're just dots!

Some probably more interesting and disgusting things for which Hirst is famous for:

Hirst is probably the babydaddy of giving your artwork unnecessarily stupid names. E.G the two above: 

Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding (Left), 1991 and Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding (Right), 1991

I reckon, I mean it's got to be, satirical surely?! He's got a thing for dead animals this one.

Love Lost, 1999

Mother and Child (Divided), 1993

Ha ha disgusting. I like the name for this one, albeit stupid aswell, it's just funny that if you were to google 'Mother and Child art' VERY different images would come up. It's a blatant piss take of the old tradition of Mary with the Christchild but also is a bit eerie. The separation of a mother from its child and vice versa is shown in the consequential separation of the cows individually too (quite literally). Do we read too much into it? is Hirst a weirdo? or is he just giving us something to look at which is vile and then laughing at our attempts to decipher it? hmmmmmmmhmhmhmmhmh

For the Love of God, 2007

A human skull, with encrusted diamonds. Errr... I'm sure it's somesort of comment on the materialistic tendencies of most of us. I would not die for diamonds though

The Incredible Journey, 2008

Love's Paradox (Surrender or Autonomy, Separateness as a Precondition for Connection.), 2007

The name of this one actually makes sense to me. I don't know if you've ever heard of Plato's Symposium but for those who haven't it's like an Ancient Greek version of Genesis from the 4th century BC. In the dialogue of the Symposium Plato tells us in the voice of Aristophanes (a play-wright who died a year before it was written) about the origins of the human race. Aristophanes explains to us that once, all humans bore 4 legs, 4 arms, and 2 faces on one head. This early human supposedly also had both female and male sets of genitalia. The Gods became fearful of these early, and very powerful, humans and thus they were presented with the "human problem". They explored many possibilities, and one was to obliterate them: they could have just struck them all down with lightning like they did the Titans. The only problem with that however is that the humans provided offerings for the Gods; and no humans - no offerings. So Zeus decided that to both stop the threat of the humans and to double up the amount of offerings the Gods should split humans into two to punish them for their proud behaviour. At first, the humans were very upset and essentially killing themselves off. Apollo therefore decided to reconfigure a new human form from the half bodies that they were left with from their old form. The new form that came to be had been 'stitched' up the side, had everything centralised, the face made whole and the genitalia split between male and female. Apparently, the only remnant of this form was the belly-button. I think that's a brilliantly inventive way to explain a bellybutton haha - in all fairness as well, they explained Androgyny this way too! Anyway, although the humans felt better, they still spent the rest of their lives looking for their other half: their soulmate. How cute. Think of that story and look back at the title!

The Immaculate Heart – Sacred, 2008

End of an Era, 2009

Togetherness, 2008

Pop Art

Pop Art was a movement in the 1950's in England and the US. It challenged other styles and movements in painting by using popular culture to form the base of the image.

Robert Rauschenberg,
Retroactive I, 1964
A year after the assasination of JFK Rauschenberg creates a collage of the late president along with images of the Space Race. This here is the modest beginnings of pop art where we begin to see current subject matters made out of a compilation of images taken from numerous sources. It hasn't quite got that artificial feel about it yet that defines pop art: bright and cartoon like colours.

Roy Lichtensein, 
Whaam!, 1962

Oh Jeff, 1964

James Rosenquist,

President Elect, 1960-1

The president is having his cake and eating it.

I Love you with my Ford, 1961

Cars supposedly link to pleasure, and now that everyone could afford them thanks to the product line back in the 20's, they were just like a can of mass produced spaghetti....

Andy Warhol,

Brushtroke, 1964

Poking fun at the fact that the abstract expressionists believed they used an 'expressive brushstroke'. The drips coming from the squiggly line are meant to be a reference to the artist Pollock.

Marilyn - Orange, 1965
He said that he produced these images with the idea of Marilyn as a person without identity, because all she is is a media entity.

Marilyn Diptych, 1962
As if a religious image. Idea of the celebrity as a demi god.

Double Elvis, 1963

Double Disaster: Silver Car Crash, 1963
These were images of a horrific car accident. Considering they didn't have seatbelts the results were pretty disgusting. Here Warhol is easily producing these images with no reference to any thought of feelings that have been provoked by it. He is saying that we'd entered an age where we can look at an image as if it wasn't real even if it is.

Dada and Surrealism

The Dada and Surrealism Movements were a response to the madness of WW1. The word Dada itself was coined on purpose to sound childish, like gibberish and obsurd to reflect WW1's distruction of morality. According to a Dadaist leading figure, Hugo Balls, it made a systematic destruction of meaning. Dadaism eventually moved into Surrealism and survived long through the 20th century.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917
This is a urinal on its side. Taken out of context and artifyed. It has Duchamp's sudname at the side 'R. Mutt'. Taking the piss out of other artists.

The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelor, 1915-23
This was shown at the 1st Internation Dada Art Fair in Berlin in 1920.

Elle a Chaud au Cul "L.H.O.O.Q", 1920
The seemingly random letters above and written below the graffitied Mona Lisa when pronounced say 'she has a hot arse'. She also has had a moustache drawn on her. Again, poking fun at artists while also implying a seedy sexual nature that is very much part of the artist cult but is never really spoken about.

George Grosz, Republican Automatons, 1920
Coming out of his head is '1,2,3 Woo! Weimar Republic!', shows how he thought that those who supported it were mindless and mechanical.

Pillars of Society, 1920
These are representatives of the extreme right-wing who he portrays as, literally, having shit for brains.

Man Ray, Gift, 1921
What a kind gift. Dadaist mentality - why not? Not like the Bauhaus with a 'form is function' approach. Just pointless really.

Prayer, 1930
Making fun of prayers. Women were clearly a muse for the Surrealists!

Minotaur, 1934
Female figure turning into something masculine, represents a dangerous female sexuality in the same way that the womaniser Picasso portrays it in his Madamoiselles D'avignon.

Max Ernst, Virgin Mary Spanking Child before 3 Witnesses: Breton, Eluard and the Painter, 1926
Oh how far we have come. I've spent an entire year studying Renaissance influenced art and I never thought I'd see the day that Mary spanks Jesus.

Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale, 1924

Dali, the Great Mastubator, 1929
My lecturer loved using this to talk about his Freudian theories - Dali is apparently scared of castration. It deals with his guilt and shame. The grasshopper below the belly and the ants represent decay and punishment for the sins of the flesh. The pair of legs to the right are supposedly Dali's father or the father of the subject come to punish the child.

The Lugubrious Game, 1929
This again is about being punished for your sexuality. You can see the male figure with soiled underwear which exemplified how one should be embarrassed for commiting sin.

Joan Miro, a Star Caresses the Breast of the Negress, 1938

Help Spain, Poster, 1937

Frida Kahlo, the Broken Column, 1944
This is a self portrait (we can tell because of those HIDEOUS eyebrows). This is a story of her accident on a bus where she suffered major injuries and miscarried her child as a result. She portrays herself proud, as a martyr. The name could suggest that she was once quite strong, now after her loss she is broken and literally torn up inside.

Henry Ford Hospital, 1932
This shows quite grotesquely one of her miscarriages.

Picasso, Guernica, 1937
You cannot write about Surrealism and leave out this. Picasso picked up and put styles under his belt for fun - this was one of them. The pain of the unjust bombing of the village Guernica is shown here. Franco let Hitler test out some armaments on a Spanish town during the Spanish Civil War.

Bauhaus

The Bauhaus was a school in 1920's Germany that was open to students and taught fine art and the crafts as the same thing. They sought to make a truly total art by combining everything from typography to architecture. The word Bauhaus supposedly meant 'House of Construction'. The creator and first leader of the school was Walter Gropius. It was founded in 1919 after censorship on the arts had decreased at the hand of the newly established Weimar Republic. The republic government funded the school and encouraged their art, but did not use it for their own propaganda purposes and therefore their distribution was not as widespread as the Russian Constructivists that were about from the same time. They still had things to learn from the Russians. Once it had matured and finally got itself an architecture department (they didn't have it for ages which is surprising when you consider what Bauhaus means), their power over the 'total art' truly kicked in and I am sure there was large influence from the Russians.

Lyonel Feininger,
Bauhaus Manifesto, 1919, Cathedral of Socialism
A picture in the Manifesto. It implies that the Bauhaus will act as influential on the socialist idea of 'production for use' as a cathedral does for the Christian faith.

Paul Klee, 
Invitation Card for Exhibition, 1923
Paul Klee tried everything, he's been a Cubist, Futurist, Expressionist, Surrealist... But he did also make himself known on the Bauhaus scene. This is his card for the exhibition that they held in 1923. Using simple forms to create a podium for the Weimar establishment. What is holding the Weimar up is the congregation of shapes that Kandinsky's theory was based on. Thus, Weimar is held up by the Bauhaus!

In the Current Six Thresholds, 1929
The thing with abstract art is that it is difficult to categorise. Why is this part of the Bauhaus and not 'the Style'? Well because the vast majority of modern art movements and schools ended up at one place: abstract art. How they got there though is important and how we categorise them.

Wassily Kandinsky,
Composition VIII, 1923
Kandinsky is the chap who wrote the theory of Translation - the idea that shapes and colours have a certain correspondance. In fact, he did a survey at the Bauhaus school and had hollow shapes of a circle, square and triangle for the person to colour in with a colour they see suitable. He had previously stated that that triangles are yellow, squares are red and circles are blue. The results of his test were quite amazing because nearly EVERYONE coloured them in that way. I'm sure that if you wrack your brain you might remember as an 11 year old being told to do that - because I was! Nowadays though, the results are different because we see triangles as red because we see red triangular warning signs; circles tend to be drawn as yellow as a reference to the sun; and lastly squares blue because we've already chosen the other two colours!

Walter Gropius
Gropius House, 1938
The creator of the Bauhaus School designed himself a family home in the USA. Architecture has become useful and minimalist.

Bauhaus, 1925-26
The famous typography created by Herbert Bayer. He designed it in the belief that it was the clearest typeface and based it on 'timeless' laws.

Fagus Shoe Factory, 1911-25

De Stijl

De Stijl, meaning 'the Style' was a Dutch movement in 1917 by Theo Van Doesburg that set out to reduce art to shapes and colours. It was influenced by Cubist painting and went on to influence the Bauhaus after it.

Piet Mondrian,
Apple Tree, 1908
Piet Mondrian became one of the leading figures of De Stijl - but like the rest of them he started with figurative art (or at least, a bit more figurative than it was to become...)

Ocean 5, 1915
Cue the essential shapes with nothing else. This is purely a formalist approach whereby shapes and colour are all that is used to represent an image. The lines look a little bit like ripples of an ocean.

Composition No. II: Composition in Line and Colour, 1920
Things were getting simpler and more abstract...

Composition A, 1920
Here he has essentialised reality into simple elements. Even more simple than before and this time doesn't even have a name.

Lozenge Composition, 1925

NYC, 1941-42
This although simple, appealed to me. I'm not gonna lie and say that I'd love to go to an exhibition full of these kind of compositions - but the idea that a city is a grid is quite cool I think. It gives me more of a powerful impression of a city than any specific street would because at the end of the day, when you go up in a plane and see a city you don't see individual little things. Like Milton Keynes for example, a grid with billions of roundabouts, I'd like to see that from the sky. Or Barcelona, as the plane went up into the air as I left I noticed that half of the city is constructed like a grid. So, when I see this, I think of that and that specific experience.

Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1943
I am so certain that Space Invaders came from this!!! Uncanny. The lines and colours have become more frequent and close together - I would suppose that's Mondrian's way of telling us that the Broadway's Boogie Woogie is particularly noisy and full of movement. Closer together: picking up pace.

Theo Van Doesburg,
Composition IX, 1917
The creator of De Stijl himself! This is otherwise known as 'card players' and until I knew that I didn't see anything but shapes. But now that I know, I can see two people playing cards.

Cafe Aubette, 1926
Modernist Architecture is amazing. This is COOOOOL. You can defo see where the Bauhaus got some of its ideas from. Simple shapes and colours - lovely. I think De Stijl did a lot more for architecture than it did art and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that.

Gerrit Rietveld,
Schroeder House, 1924
My university courses have been full of images, sculptures, buildings, churches etc of very old things for a long old time - even 18th and 19th century stuff looks pretty old. But then I saw this, for the first time ever - something in Art History that I'm used to!

J.J.P Oud, 
Cafe de Unie, 1925

Ludwig Van der Rohe,
German Pavillion, 1929