Art

The conceptual art of the Young British Arists, or yBas, began in Londons Docklands in July of 1988, developing into a style of art that became Britains most distinctive phase. This movement  visually portrayed what is valued in life by reducing painting to its basic elements. Artists of the yBas were students Damien Hirst, Cornelia Parker, Sarah Luccas, Tracy Emin, and Cornelia Parker   with Damien Hirst as its leader   with critics calling it cultural obscenity.

The first art show which began the yBas movement was organized by Damien Hirst, with assistance from Carl Freedman, Abigail Lane, and Angus Fairhurts. Called the Freeze exhibition, not only the art career of Damien Hirst was launched but also several young British artists. Today, Damien Hirst has become the most famous artist in Britain after the artist David Hockney which began on that day.

Hirst uses the subject of death as his chosen medium, whether it is a dead sharp floating in formaldehyde or a suspended fish hanging in the same fluid. With it, he developed unique art arrangements using form, color and shape as symbols of what would be recognized as advanced art. Hirst was fascinated with the common world around him, with the unremarkable and boring finding its way into his most memorable works.

The first impact piece of work by Hirst was The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), involving the carcass of a dead shark encased in a tank of formaldehyde at the Saatchi Gallery. From 1987 to 1997, the art of Damien Hirst pulled in viewers from a distance away, while it was surprisingly physical at a close up. The power of this type of work belies his words to writer Gordon Burn, Im not afraid of meeting somebody and them being shocked and going, Oh fuck, hes just a little twat from Leeds, really.It doesnt really matter, does it I am who I am. The shark was like the end of that, and Freeze was the beginning.