Damien Hirst

Between 2006 and 2016, two of contemporary art's biggest names--curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and artist, entrepreneur and art collector Damien Hirst (born 1965)--met to conduct a series of conversations. The two cover a wide variety of subjects in their ten years of conversations: the various mediums, methods and themes used by the artist; the gallery system and the ever-changing global art market; artists' books; pop art; Richard Hamilton; money, commercialism and merchandise; life, death and immortality. Blunt and unapologetic, Hirst is an ideal interview subject, and Hirst Interviews allows the artist to speak his mind in his own voice.

A revealing collection of quotations from world-renowned artist Damien HirstHirst-isms is a collection of quotations—bold, surprising, often humorous, and always insightful—from celebrated artist Damien Hirst, whose controversial work explores the connections between art, religion, science, life, and death. Emerging in the 1990s as a leading member of the Young British Artists (YBAs), Hirst first became famous and gained a reputation as a provocateur with a series of artworks featuring dead and sometimes dissected animals (including a shark, sheep, and cow) preserved in glass tanks filled with formaldehyde. Gathered from interviews and other primary sources and organized by subject, these quotations explore Hirst’s early years, family life, and the beginnings of his fascination with art; the major themes of his work; his influences and heroes; his motivation; his process and the boundary-pushing production of his work; and his thoughts on the art world, fame, and money. The result is a comprehensive and nuanced book that sheds new light on a fascinating and important contemporary artist. Select quotations from the book:“The less I feel like an artist, the better I feel.”“I like it when people love my art. I like it when people hate my art. I just don’t want them to ignore my art.”“Painting’s like the most fabulous illusion, because there’s nothing at stake. Except yourself.”“I’m interested in the confusion between art and life, I like it when the world gets in the way.”“Sometimes you have to step over the edge to know where it is.”

On the early work of Britain’s most successful living artist, from his formative years at Goldsmiths to his pioneering conceptual pieces among the Young British Artists The stellar ascent of Damien Hirst (born 1965) began with his enrollment at Goldsmiths College in 1986, where he quickly became one of the standout artists of his class. This retrospective focuses on the early years of Hirst’s trailblazing career, featuring his university work, his first Spot Painting and his experiments with collage. Additionally, this volume highlights his most iconic projects, such as the staggering 1999 painted bronze sculpture Hymn and his now-infamous series of conceptual works in which taxidermied animals are suspended in vitrines of formaldehyde. A selection of quotes accompanies the illustrations and reveals the themes which have remained constant throughout the artist’s career: beauty, religion, science, life and death.

This exquisite hardback volume, boasting a ribbed leather spine, presents the second collection of a series of drawings on paper by Damien Hirst (born 1965), rendered in a range of mediums including silverpoint, charcoal and ink. The drawings form part of Hirst's most ambitious project to date, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, presented at the Pinault collection's two Venetian museums—the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana—from April to December 2017. The exhibition marked the first time in the Collection's history that both museums had been dedicated to the work of a single artist.

Private museums like the Menil Collection in Houston, the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence or the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek have existed for a long time, but over the past decade, many more private museums have been founded all over the world. In Athens, Jakarta, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Milan and Paris, major collectors have built, or are planning to build, large new museums. These projects are often greeted as generous initiatives that combine the presentation of an individual collection with innovative architecture, and offer contemporary art great visibility. Sometimes they are also seen as competitors for beleaguered public institutions, as both structures vie for funding and visitors. Given this current panorama of growing private initiatives, The Private Museum of the Future, published by the same editors of 2015's successful Museum of the Future, tackles this central issue in museology and contemporary society.

Colour Space finds its origin in the first Spot Painting Hirst made in 1986, whilst in his first year of Goldsmiths. Conceived in 2016, Colour Space serves as a response to the iconic Spot Painting series that followed the original work. Where the Spot Paintings were painstakingly rigorous in their formulaic grid structure, intended to look as if they'd been made 'by a person trying to paint like a machine , the Colour Space series is looser, more painterly, featuring informal drips and splashes of paint. In both series, however, no two colours repeat within a single canvas. Colour Space features an introductory essay by Ann Gallagher, Director of Collections at Tate. The book's publication coincides with the first public exhibition of the works at Houghton Hall, Norfolk in March 2018.

Sweet Liberty brings together 15 years of work by painter Dan Colen (born 1979), one of the “bad boys” of the New York art world who emerged onto the scene in the early 2000s alongside artists like Dash Snow and Ryan McGinley. Witty, shocking, poignant and nihilistic, Colen’s art presents a portrait of contemporary America and investigates the acts of producing and looking at art. Alongside significant early works such as “Me, Jesus and the Children” (2001–03), this publication features paintings from Colen’s long-running Gum and Trash series, as well as four installations in which Colen appropriates imagery from the mass media and American subcultures. This volume marks, in Colen’s own words, “the first time I’ve been able to present the full range of my work and the wide-ranging ideas, crafts, materials, technologies and processes that I engage with.”

The premise of this book couldn’t be simpler: 130 photographs of Damien Hirst taken by David Bailey during a single shoot lasting eight minutes. Each pose is spontaneous and determined not by Bailey but by Hirst, who mocks the camera with his tongue poked out, mouth open wide and hands pulling at his cheeks. These photos are humble and unrehearsed, and so continue the sprit of Bailey’s Democracy in which Bailey photographed a cross-section of naked subjects, shunning issues of composition, lighting and digital manipulation. Renouncing text and even a title page, 8 Minutes resists formulaic over-designed coffee-table publications. Bailey’s roguish message: what you see is what you get. David Bailey, born in London in 1938, is one of the most successful photographers of his generation. By the 1960s his work, especially for Vogue, had already made him a cult figure. His numerous books include Trouble and Strife, Nudes, If We Shadows, The Lady Is a Tramp and David Bailey’s Rock ’n’ Roll Heroes. Steidl has published Birth of the Cool, Chasing Rainbows, Locations, Bailey’s Democracy, Havana, NY JS DB 62, Pictures That Mark Can Do and Is That So Kid.