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Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst (born June 7, 1965; 57 years old) is an artist, entrepreneur and art collector from the United Kingdom. His artistic styles originated from the Young British Artists Program (YBA). This resulted in a large amount of attention in his pieces during the 1990's in the UK. According the English news, Hirst is the richest living in the United Kingdom with an estimated wealth of $384 million just in 2020 Sunday Times Rich List. His work started with death and darkness, but later on changed his style to more vivid colors and a sense of rebirth. Although he is a great artist in most people's eyes, he also receives a lot of backlash for his work being "challenged and tested as plagiarized" 16 different times.

Website: https://gagosian.com/artists/damien-hirst/

Instagram: @damienhirst

Twitter: @hirst_official

Life and Education
Damien Hirst was born in Bristol United Kingdom and grew up in Leeds, United Kingdom with one brother and one sister. Hirst spent his life with his mother, Mary Brennan, who worked for the Citizens Advice Bureau, and his step-father who was reported to be a motor mechanic. In his youth, he was rebellious for shoplifting and getting arrested two times, but turned a new leaf when he realized that his talent for drawing was being noticed by his mother and his art teachers. From this point on, he excelled in his art courses and attended art school previously known as Jacob Kramer College (now called Leeds Art University since 2017). He also studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College from 1986-89. As Damien Hirst was conducting art pieces, he later found love with American Maia Norman. Although the couple never got married, they had three wonderful boys together: Connor, Cassius and Cyrus Hirst. Hirst also admitted to having a drug and alcohol problem that had effecting him for 10 years in the 1990's, right when he became a father, "I started taking cocaine and drink... I turned into a babbling fucking wreck."

Career
Damien Hirst had his first solo exhibition that was organized by Tamara Chodzko in an unused shop in London in 1991. Before his solo exhibition, he partook in a group exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery in Paris, France. In 1991, an Iraqi businessman offered to fund whatever artwork Hirst desired to create and made his most famous piece called The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. This piece was a shark in a vitrine filled with formaldehyde. The shark had been caught by Australian fishermen that costed £6,000 while the piece sold for £50,000. Hirst was nominated for the Turner Prize, but the prize was rewarded to Grenville Davey. In 1995, there was a piece that New York public health officials had to ban to prevent unpleasant sights and because of the fear of visitors getting upset and queasy when seeing the piece. The piece was called Mother and Child Divided, which consisted of a cow and bull both dissected into two halves in another vitrine filled with formaldehyde. However, also there was a lot of controversy on this piece, he was still awarded the Turner Prize.

In 2000, Hirst built a sculpture named Hymn, that Saatchi also bought for £1 milion. This piece was shown at the Ant Noises in the Saatchi Gallery. However, as Hirst's controversy followed him, the backlash he received from the sculpture caused him to get sued because of copyright to it being related to a childhood toy, but still continued to sell three more of the same sculpture for similar prices. Hirst didn't let the late and conflicts to him because either way, his work would be sold to those with similar interest. For example, Larry Gagosian held another showing for Damien called, Damien Hirst: Models, Methods, Approaches, Assumptions, Results and Findings in September of 2000. This show had 100,000 people visit the show in 12 weeks and all of Hirst's work was sold.

In May of 2004, Damien designed an imagine cover for the band Band Aid 20 's single, "Grim Reaper" where there was a Black child perched on his knee, however, it was not a pleasant imagine to the group's liking and was replaced with a reindeer in the snow with the child next to it. In December 2004, Hirst's piece The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living was resold by Saatchi to Steve Cohen, an American art collector, for $8 million and was then donated to The Metropolitan Museum of Art In New York.

Fast forward to 2011, Damien Hirst came in contact with the American band, Red Hot Chili Peppers. Hirst designed their I'm with You album cover in 2011. And this where Hirst's colorful era began to make an appearance because of his work within the next year. In 2012, Hirst signed the British Union Flag that would be represented as a centerpiece for the 202 Summer Olympics Closing ceremony in London.

From July 2021-January 2022, Damien had exhibited one of his best known series, Cherry Blossoms. The exhibition took place at the Foundation Cartier in Paris, France. The show the traveled to the National Art Center in Tokyo, being his first major solo in Japan. This series is something that has people believe he will change his style entirely. From his pieces being death to blossoms is something that change opinions on Hirst possibly forever.

Notable Moments

 * 1) Damien Hirst has always been sort of rebellious and to his own terms and conditions for his art and life in general however, he didn't let the controversy and conflict get to him or his work.
 * 2) In 2007, his piece For the Love Of God", a diamond-encrusted skull made of platinum that sold for £5 million.
 * 3) In 2008, Hirst auctioned his work in his individual manner and sold his "The Golden Calf" for $200.7 million which broke the record for a single artist auction.
 * 4) Hirst's piece "Away From The Life" was a big hit because of the meaning behind it being that animals are sometimes being "away from life" or from being disconnected from life.
 * 5) From 2002-2004, Hirst made a piece called "Eternity". It contains butterflies and a kaleidoscope like piece that represents the beauty of the butterflies despite their death. The piece sold for £4,700,000.
 * 6) Some of Damien Hirst's pieces personally connected with some people and their daily struggles. One of Damien's pieces, known as "When There's A Will, There's A Way," is a medicine cabinet sculpture with HIV/AIDS that represents fighting nearly unbeatable conditions and continuing to live their lives.
 * 7) In the 1990's, Hirst had a vision to incorporate faith, science and art all together. So, he made his series The Last Supper, which was supposed to reenacted Jesus's last supper which converted British food items into pharmaceutical labels.
 * 8) Hirst won the Turner Prize in 1995 for his piece, Mother and Child Divided.
 * 9) One of his 2012 pieces, "In and Out Of Love" at the Tate Modern Art Institute, he needed to use 9,000 butterflies.
 * 10) Hirst's work today is completely different than his style before. His series, Cherry Blossoms, had taken the audience for surprise because of his pervious work. The colors are definitely something that concern them considering his past art however, the British are excited to see where this could go.