Programme 6: Pharmacy

The Art Works

Title: Pharmacy
Artist: Damien Hirst
Medium: Mixed media
Date: 1992

Damien Hirst (born 1965) is one of the most famous of the younger generation of British artists. He became notorious as the artist who exhibited animals preserved in formaldehyde, and is one of several contemporary artists who has benefited from Duchamp’s introduction of the readymade.

At first glance Pharmacy may appear to be a replica of a chemist’s shop – although we are obviously in a museum and there is no evidence of any point of sale. The work takes up the entire room, and as such is an installation. Around the walls are glass cases with white shelves stacked with a variety of drugs, and there are also desks on which stand glass bottles of brightly coloured liquids, one of the hallmarks of old-fashioned chemist shops. The chemists themselves appear to have left notepads and other things on the desks.

In the centre of the room are steps which should be used to reach things from the top shelves, but which instead have bowls of honey on them. In the centre of the room is a device to electrocute flies. Hirst suggests that the honey would lure insects into the space, and they will then be killed. In the same way, he says, we tend to put our trust in medication and drugs, even though we will all die in the end. The objects he has assembled here therefore symbolise our ultimately futile attempts to stave off death. The idea came to him on a visit to a chemist with his mother. When he realised how much faith people seem to have in drugs these days, he wondered why people do not put more faith in art to enhance their lives.

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