The Lever House $10M School: Archeology of Lost Desires
Lever House Art Collection, New York 12 November 12, 2007 through February 9, 2008
Damien Hirst
School: The Archeology of Lost Desires, comprehending Infinity, and the Search for Knowledge
Never mind that the world financial markets are in turmoil, or that Sotheby’s had a very rocky auction night last Wednesday. A rich artist and his developer patron proved this weekend that excess endures.
Saturday night, when the shroud was removed from Lever House’s lobby in midtown Manhattan, viewers confronted a veritable Noah’s Ark of roadkill - 30 dead sheep, one dead shark, two sides of beef, 300 sausages, a pair of doves - that the British artist Damien Hirst describes as his most mature piece.
The installation, on view through Feb. 16, was commissioned by the real estate developer Aby Rosen, who owns Lever House, the Seagram Building and the Gramercy Park Hotel, and by Alberto Mugrabi, a Manhattan dealer. Rosen also happens to be one of the leading U.S. collectors of contemporary art. The two have jointly purchased Hirst’s installation, titled “School: The Archaeology of Lost Desires, Comprehending Infinity, and the Search for Knowledge,” for $10 million for the Lever House Art Collection.
Damien Hirst works with a wide range of materials and forms-installations, sculptures, and drawings and seeks to challenge the boundaries between art, science,and popular culture. His energy in inventiveness, and his consistently visceral visual arresting work, has made him a leading artist of his generation. Hirts explores the uncertainty at the core of human experience: love, life, death, loyalty, and betrayal through unexpected and unconventional media.
In this Lever commission, Hirst presents an elaborate and surreal schoolroom that is populated with his most well known sculptures-glass tanks containing animal carcasses suspended in formaldehyde. The students are organized in three rows of equally spaced tanks placed on autopsy tables. The sheep in the tanks suggest docile and innocent youngsters involved in learning. However Hirst presents contradictory states of being-the dead animals preserved in liquid are being fed through intravenous tubes, as if supporting life.The rear of the classroom is a single menacing and bloody shark that suggests aggression and fear, and a disruption of the calm and religious aura.
At the front of the room stands a twelve-foot tank containing two sides of beef, an umbrella, a birdcage, containing a white dove and an armchair. This surrogate “Teacher” makes direct reference to paintings by two artists admired by Hirst, -Francis Bacon, and Rene Magritte. Bacon frequently incorporated beef in his paintings, particularly Painting (1946)which features a suited figure under an umbrella with cow carcasses suspended in a cruciform behind him, and Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef ( Study after Velasquez ) 1954, depicting the screaming Pope Innocent 10th.
Hirst has also borrowed from Magritte’s The Healer (1936), which presents a seated man with a cane whose head and body are portrayed as a birdcage with doves that is covered with a cape and hat. Hirst seems to suggest that these demigods are directing the search for knowledge.
Around the perimeter of the space are numerous stainless cases containing a variety of prescription medicine packages. Hirst is again commenting on the inevitability of death and in the almost religious belief in drugs for eternal salvation. Other objects in the school-blackboards a desk with two live birds, inverted clocks, surgery instruments, ashtrays, glasses of water and mounds of sand-refer to the dichotomy of life and death. An animal must be dead in order to be dissected and studied; birds are often used to test for toxic fumes; time will not go backwards: a dirty ashtray is a metaphor for life and death: water is needed to sustain life, yet all life forms inevitably decay into liquid and dust.
Damien Hirst School is a complex and thought provoking presentation that makes numerous references to art, science, art history, knowledge, culture, religion and beliefs. It is surprising and unexpectedly beautiful and despite its macabre contents. Hirst clearly states:” I am preoccupied with life not with death”
Joelle’s Picks:
Sources: Richard D.Marchall, Curator of the Lever House Art Collection , Art-World Excess goes to the Butcher Shop, By Carol Voguel New York Times
The Building: Lever House, 390 Park Ave New York, NY 10022
to visit
Lever House is still occupied by Lever Brothers, with public spaces open during office hours. It is located on the west side of Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan, between 53rd and 54th Streets.The building is currently in sparkling condition following a major renovation project For more information call Lever Brothers on +1 212 688 6000.The building is directly across Park Avenue from the Seagram Building by Mies van der Rohe.
The Restaurant: The Lever House Restaurant
The Book: I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, With Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now by Damien Hirst
The Video: Damien Talks about ” A Thousand Years”
