Damien Hirst Love Will Tear Us Apart Signed Contemporary Art

Artist: Damien Hirst
Title: Love will Tear us Apart
Medium: Acrylic syringe dispenser, needles, syringes and packaging
Size: 14" high x 20" wide x 9" deep
Year: 1995
Edition: 10/30
Inscription: Signed "Damine Hirst" and numbered, original gallery label on verso
Condition: Very good quality overall, please request condition report for full details
Documentation: Includes gallery certificate of authenticity and original gallery label on verso

Damien Hirst is a prominent contemporary artist regarded as one of Britain's most notorious living artists. He rose to fame as a member of the group of provocative artists, Young British Artists (YBAs) that graduated from Goldsmiths, the University of London in the late 1980s. He is known for his shocking and appalling artworks possessing conceptual depth.

His sculptures, prints, works on paper, paintings, and installations fall into three general categories: vitrines often showcasing animals in formaldehyde, spot paintings, and cabinet works. The cabinet works are sculptures resembling medicine chests filled with pills, medical supplies, and other objects. One of his most celebrated cabinet series consists of sterilized glass and steel containers with rows of tablets individually cast in metal, plaster, and resin.

Love will Tear Us Apart was inspired by a childhood incident and his fascination with medicine. As a child, Hirst swallowed some pills he mistook for candy and had to get his stomach pumped. The deliberate use of pastel colors and packaging alluding to sweets in a dispenser creates an attractive yet threatening appeal. The contrasting messages explore the concept of how humanity is confident that drugs can cure everything but can be dangerous. The title of the work comes from a song by Joy Division, a band known for their dark and introspective lyrics.

Love will Tear Us Apart includes a gallery certificate of authenticity and an original gallery label on verso. The work is signed and numbered. Furthermore, the artwork is in very good quality overall. Please request a condition report for full details.

About Damien Hirst

As one of the best-known living artists in the world, Damien Hirst is renowned for his ability to push the boundaries of contemporary art. His controversial art has both been banned and set multiple records at auction. Much of Hirst's art centers on the theme of death, and some of his most shocking art work involves full size animals, sometimes intact and sometimes dissected, suspended in formaldehyde. Although his large-scale art installations have garnered the most recognition, Hirst is a master of many mediums.

Born in 1965, Damien Hirst rose to popularity in the 1990s as a member of the Young British Artists (YBAs). In addition to art that pushed the boundaries of the conventional art world, Hirst also rose to fame in by unconventional means. Denied representation by the gallery of his choice, Hirst along with some of his friends assembled several warehouses shows in the early 1990s. At the second show that year, Hirst debuted the first of his animal pieces, A Thousand Years, featuring a rotting cow's head complete with maggots and flies. Iraqi Businessman Charles Saatchi was so impressed that he offered to fund any art Hirst wished to create. He went on to create a suspended Tiger Shark in The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living; a large-scale human anatomy study in Hymm; a rotting cow and bull banned by New York Health officials for fear it would induce vomiting in the crowd in Two Fucking and Two Watching; a diamond covered human skull in For the Love of God; and, more recently, 14 statues of a fetus growing inside the womb outside a hospital in Qatar titled The Miraculous Journey. Hirst continued to buck the traditional artist gallery system throughout his career, including selling an entire show, Beautiful Inside my Head directly at Sotheby's auction.

Although art critics remain divided on much on Hirst's most controversial work, that has not stopped the artist from achieving widespread acclaim. The appeal of his art is not restricted to wealthy collectors paying high premiums for his work at auction. His artwork was featured at the 2012 London Olympic Games closing ceremony, is featured on two Mickey Mouse themed Swatch watches, and hangs in the home of Kiley Jenner. Damien Hirst has transformed the art market and the definition of art itself. Instead of succeeding despite the controversy surrounding him, Hirst has succeeded because of it.