Huge fan of Hirst. I know he’s a little Marmite, but isn’t that the point of contemporary art? I feel he will be a reference point in contemporary conversation on the same level as Warhol, Emin and Rand for many years to come.
I was lucky enough to see Away from the Flock at Tate Britain recently. It’s a 1994 artwork and part of Hirst’s ‘putting things in formaldehyde series’ (it’s not actually called that).
Experiencing Damien Hirst’s Away from the Flock
Away from the Flock is a sculpture; it’s presented as a sculpture. It sits unchanged in its glass box and you should experience it as a sculpture. You can walk around it, in a room alongside other artists’ work in a museum with traditional sculpture. It’s unassuming and at the same time it’s unnerving. Quiet, uncomfortable but peaceful.
From controversy to Tate Britain
There are religious interpretations of this artwork that I understand, but that isn’t what resonates with me. I think that thread is somewhat on the nose and you can read about it at length online. Like all good art, this piece endures because it allows the audience, the viewer, to experience it using their own context and interpretation. Originally, the conversation around Away from the Flock was ‘this is just a dead sheep’, ‘it’s not art’. Conceptual artists were entering the mainstream and Hirst’s Natural History series was genuinely controversial.
Damien Hirst’s work, more than 30 years later
More than thirty years later, not only does this work endure, but it has earned its place in Tate Britain.
Like all great works of art, you need to be in a room with this for it to have an impact on you. You can’t just look at an image of it; it won’t make sense otherwise. When you’re with it, in context, in a gallery and as a piece of sculpture, it will make sense and it will make you pause.
Away from the Flock is not a sculpture that dominates the room. Presented at Tate Britain, it doesn’t command its own space like Duchamp’s replica urinal down the road in Tate Modern does. Fountain sits in the middle of its own space, inviting people to walk around it and look for meaning. Fountain is best enjoyed by watching people interact with it. Away from the Flock is sincere. It’s best enjoyed reflectively as you bring your own quiet context, and it will mean different things depending on the stage you’re at in life.
Why are Away from the Flock and Hirst’s equally controversial The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (or shark in formaldehyde) still such powerful pieces of work more than 30 years later? Is it context carved from endurance?
Seeing these works through other people’s reactions and news reports back in the 90s, when they were fresh, I found them interesting and new. I found the reactions equally interesting. Contemporary artists were becoming part of popular culture and Hirst was pushing at the very edge of what people were comfortable with.
Seeing Away from the Flock as an adult at 43, presented exactly as I remembered it, unchanged like a photograph and surrounded by my own context, made me pause. It made me reflect. I feel that the more time passes, the better this work becomes.
Preserving Away from the Flock
The reality is that the sculpture needs to be preserved and maintained because formaldehyde only slows the process of decomposition. I suppose that’s the dirty little secret behind Away from the Flock. However, when we encounter it as museum visitors, we are seeing the same sculpture as it was originally presented. Photographs fade and need to be reprinted. Paintings need to be restored. Nothing really lasts forever.
Is this the moment when I flip the article and talk about brands that have carved out meaning through endurance? Branding that infected or predicted the modern zeitgeist? No.
Am I trying to defend Away from the Flock as art? No. It has proven itself to be art.
It’s great art.
