Analysis Of Damien Hirst's 'Romance In The Age Of Uncertainty'

Damien Hirst is no stranger to playing with morbid themes based on death, human self-destruction, and a somewhat forced mortality.
“You try to avoid death, but it’s such a big thing that you can’t. That’s the frightening thing, isn’t it?”
He often stresses that people are generally too concerned about what’s going on in between- nobody takes into consideration the start or the end, and just are happy to remain floating somewhere in the middle of these two points. In his early career he spent time on a placement in a mortuary which was to profoundly influence his career in terms of subject matter. However his witty use of materials and scientific packaging somehow add a humorous element to his art which is fun and engaging, obviously conflicting
Other work such as ‘The History Of Pain’ hosts strikingly similar themes, here where an inflatable beach ball floats mid-air suspended by a powered air blower over a floor covered with knives- the ball representing Life, air blower representing God, and knives representing death. The viewer is initially attracted to the mesmerizing dance of the suspended ball, before being empathetically drawn to imagine what will happen if the air supply suddenly stops, and the ball drops onto the unyielding knife points. Past work been dismissed by critics as ‘publicity stunts’ and have been labelled to have caused ‘severe upset and induce vomit’. ‘Two Fucking Two Watching’ is an installation featuring 2 dead rotting cows being forced to mate by the act of hydraulics. Critics disapproved and insisted Hirst went too far. His work employs a poetic merging of spectacle and
WHERE THERE’S A WILL THERE’S A WAY features use of pharmaceuticals to represent a strong ideology. This installation consists of a white frame, where you can visibly see a cluster of antiretroviral pills used to treat HIV/AIDS, which are resting on metal shelves. This has a strong link to the work in ‘HIV AIDS, Drugs Combination’, where on display is an open hand, where in the palm of which are the same 3 drugs which are together in the cabinet. These aesthetics of the analytic environment and the drugs cabinet are a compelling contrast to the conventional visual language of a framed painting. This creates an effect which is at once visually sophisticated in its neatness and use of numerous items, and unnerving in the cold and morbid subtlety of the pills. This means his work can always be looked at from various angles- for instance here the viewer may be looking at jewels or sweets, something of a visually pleasing and rich nature, or in contrast a sullen representation of a remaining human life span which is predicted by the drugs used to maintain it. The dangers to human health of smoking tobacco are launched into perspective and a new composition in PURGATORY- another of Hirst’s monumental works. Here he uses similar presentation devices, a gold plated shelf and frame which are used to accommodate hundreds of cigars and cigarette stubs. The title of the