|
|
|
 
Film Revival: Rashômon
Restored 35mm print
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Fri, Dec 11 7:00 PM Sat, Dec 12 7:00 PM Sun, Dec 13 5:00 PM
 more info
|
|
|
|
Damien Hirst: End Game
|
|
|
Currently on view at the Caroline Wiess Law Building
|
End Game, a masterpiece by British artist Damien Hirst, asks the ultimate question: What does it mean to be human?
Hirst (born 1965) is the leading figure of a new generation of artists who emerged on the London scene in the late 1980s. Known as the "Young British Artists," they first received public notice in 1988 when Hirst (while still in school) organized the breakthrough Freeze exhibition. The YBAs quickly became recognized as a fresh movement on the international stage, producing some of the most powerful and challenging art works of the 1990s. Hirst first achieved international fame with his deliberately shocking Natural History series, which included The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), a glass and steel tank containing an 18-foot tiger shark preserved in formaldehyde. The YBAs´ work was most famously showcased in 1997 in the controversial Sensation exhibition organized by London´s Royal Academy.
Framed within a pristine steel and glass cabinet measuring over six feet high and twelve feet wide, End Game confronts the viewer with images of mortality taken from the realm of modern medicine. The central two sections contain two human skeletons—one male, and the other female—back to back. The four other sections display an array of the kind of medical equipment commonly found in a hospital operating theater or a morgue. Specifically created as tools of healing, the inevitable fact remains that these saws, scissors, and probes are designed to cut into the human body. The cabinets themselves are modeled on pharmacy or medical display cases. The resulting effect is both intriguing and repellant, as is the concept of one´s own death.
Despite its deliberately non-art materials, End Game also reflects back on the classic history of art. Much as 17th-century vanitas paintings alluded to the fleeting nature of life, End Game balances the theme of death with the possibility of redemption and renewal. The pairing in particular of male and female skeletons, expresses Hirst´s ongoing investigation into the nature of love and desire, being and nothingness. In 1991 he commented, "Nothing is important; everything is. . . I don´t know why I´m here, but I´m glad I am—I´d rather be here than not. . . I am going to die and I want to live for ever. I can´t escape the fact, and I can´t let go of the desire."
 Back To Top
|
|
|
|
