We've moved on to exploring Fine Art now so today we have been looking at some Fine Artists. We've already established that Fine Art can basically be anything as long as there is a concept behind it.
One of the artists we looked at was Damien Hirst. I've never quite been able to understand his 'Natural History' series with the animal suspended in formaldehyde but I think it's clicked more for me today. I realised that it is basically a natural extension of anatomical drawing and could have its links to this. In this way it could be seen to be making a connection between past methods of art and modern ones. People are often shocked by the use of animals in Damien Hirst's work but if you think about it all the great animal painters of the past were experienced in anatomy which involved dissections and such like. For example George Stubbs dissected a lot of horses to be able to do the paintings he did but because the direct result of his work is merely a painting of a live horse and not a real dead animal, people would tend not to think of the fact that animals have died to create that work too.
I don't know if that paragraph makes any sense.
But anyway the concept behind this piece is being in two minds about something. The two cases slide backwards and forwards from each other so sometimes the pig will look whole but at other times in two halves. This definitely builds up an idea of the pull between two different ideas or plans when you can't decide something. However did this concept really require a pig in formaldehyde? I would argue, probably not.
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