Francisco Goya vs. Damien Hirst

Jessica Gerlemann Gerlemann 1
Art Appreciation
Jill Foote-Hutton
22 April 2010

Damien Hirst and Francisco Goya Contributed Exemplary Art

Damien Hirst and Fracisco Goya both contributed exemplary art in the time period that was respective to when it was introduced. Each contributed several exhibits of art that were publicized. Introducing their art to the public is the way they succeeded as artists learning what intrigued and interested not only they themselves, but others, who viewed what they were making. They not only became popular because of the work they introduced but they produced work that beautified space of their own home or working environment. Hirst had the pharmaceutical display and frozen images and Goya painted the walls of his own country house before he fell ill. Criticized or not, they were definite for taking a stance, much like the large installation, “Pharmacy,” by Damien Hirst. Four bottles filled with liquid sit on the counter that are filled with symbolization of a large life exhibit. Each represents earth, air, fire and water. (http://www.tate.org.uk/pharmacy/) Francisco Goya was famous for Saturn Devouring One of His Sons from 1820-1822. Fresco, transferred to canvas 57 7/8 ×32 5/8 in. at the Museum del Prado in Madrid Spain. There were a combination of mediums, scales, locations and dates of work that were done by both artists. A variety of bodies of work were produced by each. (Sayer, M. Henry, A World of Art, 6th edition. Oregon State University-Cascades Campus, Prentice Hall, 2010. Print.) Goya was born in Fuendetodos, Spain April 16, 1828. Hirst was born in Bristol, England in 1965. So naturally, Hirst is a little younger than Goya.

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Hirst was well known also for the freeze exhibition. Goya, on the otherhand, was known for his art commissions and painting in the courtroom. Damien introduced the “Freeze” exhibition held in London in 1988. Also, he was well known for a butterfly exhibit made from monochrome canvases inside the exhibit that I marveled at. He called these “In and Out of Love.” Not being a stranger to controversy, tales of his life and work appear in international publications. Known as a heavy drinker who liked frequent parties and a brawl now and then, he still stood as an inspiring artist. Goya born in a village in northern Spain soon moved to Saragossa as a young boy. There his father worked as a Gilder. At 14 Goya began to become a local painter at Jose` Luzan. Hirst, a visual artist, became a pioneer of the group of one of many British Artists of the Young British Artists Association or YBA. Named by Journalists after his inspiration. (http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition/.jsp?entryId=320) Full of fresh new faces, they drew an interest in everything “other than” the traditional art practices. One example of this was the rotting flesh of the dead cow Hirst used in his artwork. It turned out to be a unique phase and era for the YBA. Francisco next went to Italy to continue the study of art. Soon after Goya returned to Saragossa in 1771. Hirst, coming from a working class family, grew up in Leeds, England. After Goya returned in 1771 he began painting frescoes for a cathedral locally. (http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/goya/) His work was done in the rococo tradition and literally established Francisco’s artiste` reputation. Damien, in his early years as well, was known around Goldsmiths, a school, as a talented ostentatious student never afraid to speak or exert his opinions especially about art in his work. Goya, in contrast, professionally started painting cartoons for a factory for the royal tapestry in Madrid. By this I mean the personification of the royale`. Francisco painted these from 1775 to 1792. Influenced also by
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neoclassicism, the technique started gaining favor over the rococo traditional style. Considered to be the revolutionary Spanish Court painter and etcher, he is best known for his portraits of nobility of modern Spain. His life span ranged from 1736 to 1828 when he died.
As a mere young boy Goya learned to work in the fields, because there was little work for a gilder following his father’s work. Francisco learned to endure physical hardship in a strenuous career. Unlike Goya, Damien, who was born with less of the same hardship that Goya endured had quite a measure of success also. At thirteen, Goya’s father decided to move to Zaragoza because he was able to make more money. Jose, Francisco’s father, sent his son to school. His son eventually became recognized for his artistic talent and eventually his father entered him into the academy of the Jose Luz`an then. There Goya made the acquaintance Martin Zapater who became his correspondent and best friend. Goya first began his career when art of the Spanish court was a stagnant imitation of Italian art. At seventeen his first commission, an altarpiece, showed the apparition of the hot-blooded youth who loved bullfighting and his women. Often involved in street fights, several were killed one night and Goya had to flee for his life. At nineteen when he arrived in Madrid he entered a competition hoping to be admitted to the Royal Academy of San Fernando. Goya went on escapades that forced him to flee. In Parma his second prize painting competition won and he returned to Zaragoza painting frescoes. He fell seriously ill later after marrying Bayeu’s sister, Josefa and in 1775 after moving to Madrid. From 1776 to 1791 he painted forty-five cartoons alone. Gay idealized scenes of country life were painted and then he fell ill. Coming to a point where his pictures were criticized by Bayeu he became embittered and returned to Madrid commissioning to paint

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portraits of the royal family. (“Goya Y Lucientes, Francisco Jose`.” Collier’s Encyclopedia. 11th Volume © Crowell-Collier Educational Corporation 1969, pg 278)

In 1998 Hirst became involved in a pop group, Fat Les is the group that recorded two singles. He is interestingly not only an artist. Damien Hirst won the Turner Prize for the third installation of the Pharmacy. His work is exhibited in Britain, Korea, U.S., Australia and countries all over Europe. He has worked on several side projects. Keith Allen is an acquaintance he works on them with. Not only is there Hirst’s Pharmacy, but a Pharmacy restaurant that it has turned into that has just a taste of Damien’s work. He did this with PR legend Mathew Freud until the sale of the restaurant came about. The Montana group then bought it. Damien Hirst Pharmacy can be watched on you tube. The August 1995 exhibit involves a dead cow and bull having sexual intercourse by means of a hydraulic device. Not preserved in formaldehyde this sickening piece was left to rot. Flies about, health officials were afraid that this project might explode because methane gasses might shatter the glass. This caused vomiting to some of the viewers so it likely was not one of his most popular. To Damien, these new, introduced ways were forms of art. To some, this was gross and not the traditional way of thinking. His interest in art beyond the conventional media encompasses paintings, sculptures, video and much more.(http://www.leninimports.com/damien_hirst.html) Damien Hirst was influenced in his art at age 16 by David Sylvester’s interviews with Francis Bacon. (http://www.guardian.co/uk/theguardian/2007/sep/13/greatinterviews1) (My way into art) It was
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stated that the interviews changed the “bushy-tailed, bright-eyed artist.” He mentions that he consumed the information much like consuming them “like a bible to a believer.” In the article, “My way into art,” he describes it as one of the first things he used that influenced his art that he didn’t have to get a dictionary just to figure out what it meant. This describes how the not only accurate and technical but precise artist took into account the research and information he connected to his art work. Francis Bacon influenced his early art. Finding his interviews he became interested in invention, accident, violence and abstraction. Not only did Damien try new and innovative ways of art but he really loved glass which is how it became part of many of his exhibits being it is transparent. The Pharmacy became about by the idea of confidence and trust in medicine. His pieces like Substitute Holidays, No Feelings and God are to be a paradox of the Western notion that medicine and chemicals being able to help a person to cheat death. He says, “You can only cure people for so long and then they’re going to die anyway. You can’t arrest decay, but these works suggest you can.”
Goya was responsible for many of the painting series called the “Disasters of War” Series. These were the most brutal of the guerilla war and Peninsular War and shows the truth of the brutality of the war he seen. Hirst was good at showing the truthfulness of death and the life of medicine. Each took drastic measures and Damien even went to non-traditional measures such as the dead cow rotting to draw a point about life and how it is eventually going to die after medicine is used to preserve it as much as possible. Francisco painted much of the brutality of war. Here is where each artist took an interest turn of similarity towards each other.
Damien uses shock as a relevant and formal element of design. Also, he likes to focus on the science of life. Filling his tanks of glass displays with Formaldehyde as a preservative he
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also has temporal spot paintings 650×546in. He collected dots from each of the people he had paint them and then displays them. Liking to shock his viewers because it gives him
pleasure as an artist he feels that if he does this, he has done a good job. He uses the cow’s open skull with flies and the fetus and intestines of a pregnant woman. Interestingly he links the pregnant women to the happiness and the horrors of pregnancy and also to his own personal experience of his wife’s pregnancy. This artist uses techniques that awes and makes the audiences mouth drop agape when looking at the patience and value that each of his pieces of work really have. Goya in contrast has art that some considered less full of life because he suffered through the stages and horrors of war. It being what impacted him the most and what he knew best he decided to highlight it. He chose black and whites in his war exhibits of the “Disasters of War Series.” He used a variety of water colors and techniques in the frozen country exhibits full of life and used duller colors for the court and the “Series.” The mouth in Goya’s art, more than anything else, gives off expressions of happiness, sadness, guilt, distress, and leer, gape, gap or grin. Hirst uses organic and representational displays. Also, he uses the painted dots as art for art’s sake and also has some connection to his other artwork in the Pharmacy. The dots represent his pills and each of them have been individually painted by other people. Observing subjectively, the art is intriguing, interesting and is full of vivacity or what you might say to be “life.” For the “Freeze” art exhibit special tanks of Formaldehyde are used in making still images relating to nature and having spatial significance. The dots by Hirst are temporal. Also they are kinetic and moving. Goya’s art seems to be frozen moments and stops in time or snap shots of the “Country Life” in Madrid Spain. There seems to be an emphasis on
the life also of the art then that inspired him in his watercolors. Although, with a rough
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background and some hardship, he produced some duller images of life and the way he felt or perceived things for the Spanish court. More than likely, his Country Life Frescoes had the proportionate scale and set the scene of a happy or gay life. There is balance in some of his older frescoes, but horridity and famine, violence and misery in his particular painting in our art book of the god, Saturn, eating his own son.
Presentation in Goya’s work was just as critiqued as Hirst’s work. In contrast though, Damien’s science provides a lot more patience. Hirst’s work is organized for presentation to other’s in a museum whereas Goya worked on several levels on his own, in schools, and then for the Spanish court so there had to have been some dullness or vulgarity in his scenes because of his environment concluding to the war and the courtroom. He also had commissions in which his artwork had a need to be vulgar in order to be fully understood by the viewer. Similarly both delighted in creation and both showed the true nature of some aspects of life in their artwork. Hirst with frozen images might have represented the vivacity of life for Goya it was the country life. Each used different techniques and one was water color while the other might have been temporal or something similar.
Cultural perspectives that probably influence Goya was likely the influence of court decisions, court scenes and his own experiences and learning lessons of those from his personal life. When criticized he was embittered so his artwork must have been the pride in his life. Damien had to have had interest in creation and the passion of love as his butterfly exhibit was called, “In and Out of Love,” which impressed me much. Damien used things that inspired him and narrated truth. Also, his work included jaw-dropping artifacts like the diamond skull with

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the teeth being the only thing leftover, “For the Love of God,” as it is called. (http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/famous-artists/damien-hirst.htm) Hirst also uses hues, temperatures and chiaroscuro to the color scale of primary colors of reds, greens, yellows, blues and violets in other shades and hues such as red- and blue- violets. Both use psychological implications to produce a happy mood.
Each artist plays a vital role in the outcome of their work. Damien and Francisco both used themes of art in different ways. One documented the world after becoming deaf after his illness and the other still documents the world today. Goya from experience, witnessed the horrors of war and that is why also not all of his paintings are the happy Country life. Hirst still uses and invents new and innovative ways to document the world around him. Both used their imagination well. Each document the beautiful and sublime. They fit into social commentaries. Each fell well into the category of self-referencing art and universal truths. Goya likely has some evidences of the effects of war and politics in his more dreary pieces of work. The number of works by both artists connect to the outside world and live and shine without conflicting the space of one another by much. In contrast though, Hirst seemed to focus on the positivities of life. Naturally after becoming deaf, Goya focused on some of the politics in his life that changed life around him. This likely was the paintings he painted from his experiences afterwards. The happy scenes of the balanced “country life,” and “In and Out of Love,” compliment one another. The unhappier times for Goya where he connected the negative sides of war and politics were similar to the shark frozen exhibit by Hirst, called, “The Physical Impossibilities of Death.”
Thematic connections for rococo art would include the death of Louis XIV in 1715 in which afterward French life became exceptionally well. Whereas the taste was formed by
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societal women with real, covert, political power including Louis XV’s mistress. A French word derived from French rocailled, referring to small stones and shells that decorate interiors of
grottos, the artificial caves were popular in landscape design at the time. (A World of Art the sixth edition ©2010 by Pearson Education Inc. New York. Sayer, Henry) Thematic connections for Hirst would probably be the repetition in rap music where the diamond skull is used in Kanye West’s Video as modern art. Also, a theme of Hirst was to produce images that helped viewers and art appreciators understand the science of life. Goya’s thematic connection to viewers was to show the truth of the beauteous and ugly aspects of life. The historical relevance of the works of art is to display art to beautify and add value to the space around us in our every day environments and to add though much of like the work that is backed publicly by the National Endowment for the Arts. Truly then, Damien Hirst and Francisco Goya contributed awe-inspiring art.