Provenance
White Cube, London
Exhibited
London, Tate Britain, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, 3 March–31 May 2004 (another example exhibited)
Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, The Agony and the Ecstasy: Selected Works from 1989–2004, 31 October 2004–31 January 2005
Miami Beach, Bass Museum, Art Basel Outdoors Exhibition, 1 December–4 December 2011
Literature
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, exh. cat., Tate Britain, London, 2004, pp. 78–79 (another example illustrated)
The Agony and the Ecstasy: Selected Works from 1989–2004, exh. cat., Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, 2004, pp. 46–47 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
Throughout his controversial career, Damien Hirst has continually pushed the boundaries of art and science in his exploration of humanity. While Hirst’s paintings seemingly appropriate life through the representation of death or medicine, his sculptures often dwell on the harmony and integrity of human and animal anatomy, exploring the simplicity of its mechanics and the complexity of its perpetuation. Sensation, executed in 2003, is a powerful combination of these paradoxical concerns.

The present lot is an oversized painted bronze sculpture based on an academic anatomical model, of the type most likely to be found in a school science laboratory. It depicts a cross-section of a chunk of human flesh, revealing the labyrinthine hidden workings of the body’s largest organ – the skin. This work follows on from Hymn, 1999–2000, which is similar in nature, although the subject matter is an anatomical model of a male figure said to have been based on his son’s Humbrol Young Scientist Anatomy Set, an educational toy designed by Norman Emms. Directly enlarging such an anatomical model undermines accepted concepts of figurative sculpture, as does the use of painted bronze. Bronze is freighted with connotations of traditional statuary, and to paint it goes against the art-historical norm, much as radically enlarging the proportions of an anatomical model goes against the scientific norm. Hirst sees the medium of painted bronze as being poised between painting and sculpture: neither a painting nor a sculpture, but a painted object. The delineated boundaries between painting and sculpture are broken down, so that both exist within a single work of art.

“Hirst subverts the humanism and allegorical anthropomorphism of traditional sculpture, indicating and recalling with surgical precision what occurs continually and without knowing, within our body, exposed and in turn heedless to the ravages of history: cells that multiply and die, blood that flows, glands that secrete, lungs that exhale and inhale air, the liver that filters the spoils of the everyday hunt, white corpuscles that attack infection. All this occurs parallel to, and in the absence of, any respite from what is going on outside us and despite us. But at the same time, in an increasingly accelerated, technological, virtual, and robotized world, anatomical exposition re-solidifies reality around the verification of the senses, around error, around the degenerative aspect of the body. And, as in all Hirst’s work, it conveys, mirrors, and excavates life’s tortuous journey between fear and desire.” (Mario Codognato in Damien Hirst, exhibition catalogue, Museo Archelogico Nazionale Napoli, Naples, 2005, p. 46)
Artist Biography
Damien Hirst
British • 1965
There is no other contemporary artist as maverick to the art market as Damien Hirst. Foremost among the Young British Artists (YBAs), a group of provocative artists who graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London in the late 1980s, Hirst ascended to stardom by making objects that shocked and appalled, and that possessed conceptual depth in both profound and prankish ways.
Regarded as Britain's most notorious living artist, Hirst has studded human skulls in diamonds and submerged sharks, sheep and other dead animals in custom vitrines of formaldehyde. In tandem with Cheyenne Westphal, now Chairman of Phillips, Hirst controversially staged an entire exhibition directly for auction with 2008's "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever," which collectively totalled £111 million ($198 million).
Hirst remains genre-defying and creates everything from sculpture, prints, works on paper and paintings to installation and objects. Another of his most celebrated series, the 'Pill Cabinets' present rows of intricate pills, cast individually in metal, plaster and resin, in sterilized glass and steel containers; Phillips New York showed the largest of these pieces ever exhibited in the United States, The Void, 2000, in May 2017.
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24

Damien Hirst

Sensation

2003
Acrylic paint on bronze.
198.1 × 316.2 × 165.1 cm (77 7/8 × 124 1/2 × 65 in).
Signed ‘D. Hirst’ and numbered of 3 on the base. This work is from an edition of 3.

Estimate
£350,000 - 450,000 ‡♠

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

16 February 2012
London

1
This lot is no longer available.
2
Joe Bradley
Killroy
Estimate £30,000 - 40,000
Sold for £49,250
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3
Kelley Walker
Untitled
Estimate £50,000 - 70,000
Sold for £85,250
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4
Christopher Wool
Untitled
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000
Sold for £169,250
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5
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate £450,000 - 650,000 ‡♠
Sold for £505,250
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6
Marc Quinn
The Golden Column (Microcosmos)
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ‡♠
Sold for £289,250
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7
Cindy Sherman
Untitled #410
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £433,250
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8
Ugo Rondinone
VIERZEHNTEROKTOBERZWEITAUSENDUNDNULL
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000
Sold for £157,250
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9
Takashi Murakami
Troll’s Umbrella
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £385,250
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10
Thomas Schütte
Gelber Hund
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ♠
Sold for £241,250
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11
Isa Genzken
Dubai
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ♠
Sold for £61,250
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12
Andy Warhol
Mao
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ‡
Sold for £457,250
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13
This lot is no longer available.
14
George Condo
Woman in Blue Chair
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £205,250
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15
Damien Hirst
Wretched War
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 Ω♠
Sold for £325,250
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16
Andreas Gursky
Jumeirah Palm
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ♠
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17
Lucio Fontana
Concetto spaziale, Attese
Estimate £1,000,000 - 1,500,000 ‡♠
Sold for £1,049,250
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18
Roni Horn
When Dickinson Shut Her Eyes, no. 1259
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000
Sold for £121,250
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19
Richard Prince
My Funny Valentine
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000
Sold for £181,250
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20
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (HALF-EATEN)
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000
Sold for £181,250
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21
Ahmed Alsoudani
Untitled
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £229,250
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22
Walead Beshty
FedEx® Kraft Box© 2005: FedEx Standard Overnight Los Angeles–New York, trk# 8675 2590 1103; FedEx Standard Overnight New York–Washington, trk# 8631 3319 4523, date April 13–14 2009; FedEx Standard Overnight Washington–Miami, trk# 7950 0886 1541, date July 26–27 2011; International Priority Miami–London, trk # 8439 1188 5383, date January 11–13, 2012
Estimate £15,000 - 20,000 ‡♠
Sold for £58,850
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23
John Armleder
Alchemilla Vulgaris
Estimate £40,000 - 60,000 ‡
Sold for £55,250
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24
Damien Hirst
Sensation
Estimate £350,000 - 450,000 ‡♠
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25
Alex Katz
Ada on Green
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000
Sold for £229,250
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26
Olafur Eliasson
The Path Series
Estimate £50,000 - 70,000 ‡♠
Sold for £68,450
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27
Raymond Pettibon
Untitled (The view from beyond the breakers)
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000
Sold for £157,250
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Contemporary Art Evening Sale

16 February 2012 London

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Provenance

Exhibited

Literature

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

Damien Hirst

24

Damien Hirst

Sensation

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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16 February 2012
London