Damien Hirst, 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living', 1991
Tiger shark, glass, steel, 5% formaldehyde solution
213 x 518 x 213 cm
With the Met in New York planning to display Damien Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living from September until 2010, it's startling how quickly the bristling avant-garde becomes the banal picture-postcard. Why a museum that is slow to the mark on contemporary art (they acquired their first important Jasper Johns in 1998) should be so interested in pandering to the market is evidence of the rapidly expanding scope of what is considered establishment art. Central Park's new shark will make more than a splash. Even if the beast belly flops in the long run, right now it seems to be a veritable coup for the Met over their peer institutions.
Who would be unwilling to agree that the decision is not a risk worth taking? Apparently not the establishment press. On Friday The New York Times scoffed in an editorial, referring to the 1991 work, which is "usually called a piece of conceptual art," that "Mr. Hirst... has gone from being an artist to being what you might call the manager of the hedge fund of Damien Hirst's art. No artist has managed the escalation of prices for his own work quite as brilliantly as Mr. Hirst. That is the real concept in his conceptualism..." Half of the invective was directed towards the current owner of the shark, Steven A. Cohen, a hedge fund billionaire who is not only on the painting and sculpture acquisition committee of MoMA, but is reported to be planning his own museum in Connecticut.
Chuckling at the idea that the shark would be an appropriate centerpiece in the headquarters of a hedge fund, a business climate known for its tooth-and-nail ferocity, the American press speculated that Cohen's wife was in stitches over having the shark clutter up their living room. The Saatchi-era shark was falling apart, so after Cohen purchased the work in 2005 for $8 million (merely the refurbished tank) he then had to pay for the original shark to be replaced (the cost of hunting and proper pickling). The Met's plans to secure the shark for a long-term loan went swimmingly thereafter.
The man responsible, Met curator Gary Tinterow, has consolidated his professional oversight to include art from the 19th-century to contemporary, a move that explicitly rivals the power of MoMA's Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture. Tinterow and his competitors have played a silent bidding war for the work ever since news broke that the shark was to swim the Atlantic. Since the time of the industrialists, nothing has changed in the American, milk-mustachioed envy of the European avant-garde. This move by the Met alters our sense of what America's grandest museum considers within its often shortsighted, conservative bounds.
The last time Hirst's shark was on view in America in 1999 at the 'Sensation' show on display at the Brooklyn Museum, The New Yorker magazine issued a cover parodying Mayor Giuliani's infamous attempt to evict the museum from its own premises. Summing up the embarrassing spate, the eviscerating cartoon pictured Giuliani bisected à la Hirst. Although The Physical Impossibility was easily the 800lb gorilla of the exhibition, the Catholic crusading Giuliani was also offended by Chris Ofili's dung-propped depiction of the Virgin Mary, a painting he never saw in person. Whereas, in the original 1997 Royal Academy display, Londoners were mortified by Marcus Harvey's Chuck Close-style portrait of the convicted pedophile and serial killer Myra Hindley made of children's hand prints.
The Physical Impossibility is a canonized symbol of nineties absurdism. At 22 tonnes the shark will suspend the disbelief of Met audiences. Nothing near museum mile will come close to the force of standing in front of the shark, even if they're only interested in viewing hoards of ancient Greek amphorae and its closet of Degas pastels. Now that the sacred shark is to be hoisted into America's holy of holies, an artful idea has rapidly evolved into international awe at the art of the deal.
Steve Pulimood
Steve Pulimood was educated at Columbia University in New York City. He is currently a doctoral candidate at Oxford researching the anatomy studies of Leonardo da Vinci, and preparing a book on that topic.
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