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[laszlo]

It's not about pushing boundaries or being original. It's not even about challenging the viewer. It's about an obsession with a vision. It's about the need to fill large tanks with formaldehyde and to float dead animals inside it.

I get it.

It's not about me or you or even the artist. It's about an idea that has taken over.

Comments

Re:

[anonymous]

Laszlo,
Pushing boundaries apparently pays off--big time. Damien Hirst's pickled shark (a.k.a. The Physical Impossibility of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living) sold for approximately $12 million last year, and now habitates at the Moma for the visual delight of aesthetician-elitists like us. While simpletons may view such an exorbitantly-priced acquisition as an utterly tastless display of wealth, we take our pickles seriously. Such a "capolavoro" (as we say in Bologna) as this must indeed command a princly sum. Of course, in our enlightened minds the plight of the Global South must rank far lower in importance. That said, bling-bling motherfuckers!

[laszlo]

Good for you. You caught my Damien Hirst reference. Pickled shark, in all it's blue surrealism, is a comment on how we prefer to percieve something that is dead. We don't like to think of our loved ones as mere corpses, so we dress them up in their favorite outfit, although they are clearly dead and cannont tell the difference between cashmere and bare bones, This is how we remember them and this is how we would like to see them go out as. So...why not apply that to the animal kingdom? But Hirst takes it a step further, Hirst applies the human need to preserve the body, for example: cryogenics, to the preservation and sterilization of the dead animal, albeit the shark. As a result, you get this beautiful blue, almost cryogenic, chamber that incases the shark. Maybe someday, in the future, we can resuscitate this shark and let it free - for real this time

Re:

[anonymous]

Laszlo