INTERVIEW WITH DAMIEN HIRST

From The Separation of Church and State Catalogue.  Cohen Gallery, New York.  April 1993

INTERVIEW

Damien Hirst:  The work on one hand seems very chaotic and on another level seems very organized.

John LeKay:  Well, there is a definite order in chaos and an indefinite chaos comes out of order.   Is that what you mean?

DH. I mean they are made from chaotic material like trash, but if you look more closely they look like they've been worked on, refined.

JL: I've worked on them for a year or so, it's a very slow process for me, some of the materials took me years to find, others I bought like the statue with the broken heads. Each element has gone through a complex selection process, it looks like they have been put together randomly but they weren't, it took a lot of time and energy to make it appear as if they were thrown together. but then again, I do work spontaneously especially putting things together, it's usually one simple gesture at a time.  I like to work on the fine line where something can be really awful or really beautiful, sometimes I step over that line but when everything falls into place in a kind of orderly chaotic way, it works

DH: And when it doesn't?

JL: I start again.

DH: Are the five pieces related to each other. Do you see them as a set?

JL: Yes and no. The pieces deal with different issues but in similar ways like the use of found objects. I assemble them until they become active, visually. I worked on them all at the same time, individually and together, so they do have a feeling of being related, but they are separate pieces, they work separately

.DH: In The Separation of Church and State, what do you mean by church and state?

 

 

JL: Well, a church is not only a building or a place of worship, and a state is not only a political state or a place, it can be a state like a state of mind or a state of affairs, it's not simply about politics or organized or unorganized religion and the balance of power between the two.

DH: But a cross is the basic structure of the piece,. That, together with the title implies religion,

JL: Or a crossroads or just four ways out of or into a situation, an existential dilemma that leads to avoid, empty cupboards, open draws, an empty truck, a plank leading to nowhere, everything in that piece is either broken or empty.

DH: The Mickey Mouse balloon mask bandaged to the neck of the guitar appear anthropomorphic, like a person with out arms and legs.

JL: I think of that piece as disabled, mentally rather than physically, it's about a frame of mind, a negation of feeling and energy. Maybe through over indulgence in materialism, such as TV, acquired objects, art and ornaments, the furniture that we surround ourselves with to make us feel comfortable with our lives but at the same time were trapped and crippled, it desensitizes us.

DH: The subject matter seems very depressed, even negative, the materials are tragic but the way you've handled them aside from the subject matter, is very gently. I feel sorry for the rock star or the war veteran, or the invalid, they make me think of Jesus.

JL: I think its impossible to make work like this without commenting on religion in some way, rock stars play at being Jesus, they are the icons of today. John Lennon sang about being crucified, "the way things are going they are gonna crucify me" if Jesus were around today he would probably be a rock star and he would get executed with high technology. Could you image if he were crucified in an electric chair, the pope and Madonna would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks and Jesus would be wearing an orange cat suit.

The piece is activate by the electric fan, it's like an artists statement with serious foundations, an actual belief in something to say but not being able to say it because of being disable, trapped, censored. That electric fan is like a futile relaxation pf something that can't be anymore relaxed than it already is. it create a gentle movement around the sculpture like a spring breeze, like a climate to the piece, the gentle movements make the rest of the piece seem paralyzed.

DH: Do you mean that the climate is the only life?

JL: Like the wind on your face, it's like a landscape, a formal, physical and mental landscape. It implies life. The only real life is the movement of the air around the piece.

DH: What about the  pun on the word fan, an electric fan and an rock stars fan?

JL: That's in the piece, the dysfunctional guitar, the futile music, the weak fan. I thought about that when I made it.  I was amused by it. It's like aside line, not really that important within the over structure of the piece but its there, like a back-up.

DH: All the pieces are like the mouse trap game and they all have a soundtrack contained within them.

JL: They're a visual game but they're more serious than that, through I hope they seem playful. formally. The soundtracks operate like the titles.

DH: Do you want the pieces to communicate despair?

JL: Yes and no, every cloud has a sliver lining, if someone threw out all their material possessions after the show I would be pleased.

DH: Do they relate to the earlier work like the ring of dolls and the sex pieces?

JL: I  had to move on from those pieces, I started them in 1989 but could not get gallery to show them except for a group show her and there. I see the new pieces as visual maps showing the difficulties I had trying to get the earlier works shown., I started to think I was mad with the sexual surrogate pieces, so many people showed an interest and then disappeared, now it looks like its happening again but this time I'm not interested. These new works are more internalized., more personal in one sense, but in another more objective about society as a whole, a dysfunctional society.....although I don't think its as complicated as that. Maybe they're visual traps.

 

DH: What about Zipperdeedudazipperdeeday?

JL: I bought a tape from these two drunks on the bowery, they made this record, and I built the piece around it. The pink panther could be us, everyone, everybody, looking at ourselves, like in a mirror, standing there doing nothing and not giving shit most of the time, shrugging our shoulders with open palms with nothing in them. I was going to call it the pink panther returns,

DH: I prefer Zipperdeedudazipperdeeday.

JL; So do I.

DH: There's an unhappy element to Zipperdeedudazipperdeeday, like they are two singing bums, the singings seems kind of futile, like singing when there is nothing to singing about. The broken microphones on the impoverished stand give the piece some kind of false self importance, like to hold a microphone implies an audience, yet they  don't function, and the other piece, Who's afraid of Red Yellow and Blue?  The knocked over bay carriage makes me think of  a loss of childhood and the colored air fresheners matching the blankets, all things I find sad,

JL: I read about this mass murderer who chopped up his victims and put them in garbage sacks with air fresheners to disguise the stench of rotting flesh. I thought that's quite futile, yet resourceful and kind of funny in a not so funny way at the same time. I bet the people who designed the air fresheners never imagined their product in that kind of scenario or maybe they did, who knows, nothing surprises me. I can see the piece as a still life, like a Chardin or something.....I am not explaining the properly, it's like you can view most things in life as highly sophisticated and  profoundly primitive, at the same time. So I don't think the sadness is an over-riding feeling

DH: So you don't see futility as a sad element.

JL: No, I mean it is but that's only half the story. After working on something over a long period of a year or so, it changes and the pathetic sad element can become positive. I don't mean that cynically, or like a bad joke, its the way see things.  I find humor in almost anything and everything if I really think about it, but what's funny to me I've learned is not always funny to someone else.

I don't think that art can be pessimistic, its not in the nature of it. The fact that its there is optimistic. I think humour is a healing process, it's very healthy, it can be malicious and insensitive to peoples feelings but the irony is that sometimes just to make a point, one has to create an example, and that when things get misunderstood and complicated) and the person making the joke is perceived as being malicious. Humour can get too close to the truth, too close to the bone. I think you have to be able to laugh at yourself, distance yourself from your situation, being able to seeing the incongruities, the contradictions, This is the purist from of humor and the most difficult. The saddest situation in the world can be like a slapstick element, like black comedy...comedy and tragedy, like its funny when people fall over.

 

DH: Are you making jokes about work by other artists?

JL: I'm not interested enough in other peoples work to makes jokes about them.

DH: What about other characters in your earlier works like the joker, are you consciously aware of individuals like the joker?

JL; They're fictional. They are important characters, it was away for me to be objective. They contained bits of me. the characters in the new works are more universal., angels, Jesus, the solider, I want to make them anonymous.

DH: So is your interest primarily on the formal or the narrative?

JL: Both, the two together, formalism within a narrative and vice versa. A kind of harmony of the two. If they become too obvious formally, I change them.

DH: What's the title of the blanket piece?

JL: Who's Afraid of Red Yellow and Blue after Barnett Newmans painting.

DH: t makes me think of really severe war works by George Grosz and Oto Dix, there's a battle going on like war atrocities.

JL: I've got books on wounded battle war victims.

DH: Why all floor pieces?

JL: They are all dealing with the same gravity, it's the obvious way to make them, I'm not interested illusion.

DH: What's the title of the easy chair on top of the shopping cart?

 

JL: Lazyboy Jesus. It's about many things like hypocrisy in organized religion, you know all the obvious stuff.  It's also about homeless people I've encountered on the streets, pushing their homes around like crosses on their backs. Its weird, schizophrenics and psychotics sometimes have persecution complexes, I've spent sometime over the years going to look at the art of the insane in mental institutions, it's amazing how sometimes these mentally disturbed individuals play with materials in a magical way and at times poetic, it can be really moving, childlike, so pure.

DH; What are you going to do next?

JL: I don't know yet.

DH: What did you mean earlier by all roads leading to nowhere eventually?

JL: I don't exactly know, I see it in The Separation of Church and State, I'm aware of a feeling, like entropic, but not of dying, just of relaxing like when you're tired or feeling lethargic, like activity in a trash can, a kind of formalism, it can be unraveled, the trash from breakfast will always be at the bottom.

DH: What's the title of the war piece?

 JL: These Colors Don't Run.

DH: Do you see the idea of war s a metaphor for life?

JL: It's like life in a charged situation, like loosing your temper. it's not really war, it's just intense activity, I like the way you can describe a chaotic domestic environment as a battle ground, you can say, "this place looks like a bomb has been dropped on it"