The Rotten Shark and the Burned-Down Tent

As I’m returning to the study and practice of visual art, I’m squarely back in newbie territory. I come up with a lot of questions I think are very deep and analytical only to find that they’ve already been discussed or answered. So, to shorten my learning curve I’m going to blog about my questions and discoveries. Please leave comments!

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, Damien Hirst, 1991.

Question: Is an artwork still considered original if it’s been damaged and recreated?

I’m currently reading “The $12 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark” by Don Thompson. The book opens with the story of Damien Hirst’s installation piece “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” commonly known as “the dead shark floating in the tank.”

Thompson explains that the work was completed in 1991 and by 1993 had deteriorated terribly. An effort to repair the damaged skin and replace the formaldehyde in the tank made only a slight improvement, and nothing more was done until 2004 when a new collector purchased it.

Everyone I’ve Ever Slept With 1963-1995, Tracey Emin, 1995.

Also in 2004, Hirst’s compatriot Tracey Emin lost one of her most famous installation pieces, “Everyone I’ve Ever Slept With 1963-1995” (AKA “the tent”) in a fire. The work was a cloth pup tent with embroidered panels throughout, something so fragile it was bound to be completely destroyed.

I’ll let Hirst himself pose the question behind the approach each artist took in their situation; “Are you looking for the original object, is that what you want to preserve, or do you want to communicate the idea that was originally intended?”

Hirst took the approach that his idea needed to live on therefore the object needed to be recreated. The collector who purchased the falling-apart shark paid to replace it with a new one and to refill the tank. A fresh dead shark in fresh chemical liquid allowed the piece to continue to be seen in public.

Emin’s piece was never to be replaced. She stated at the time that she couldn’t remake it because, "I had the inclination and inspiration … years ago to make that, I don't have that inspiration and inclination now. My work is very personal, which people know, so I can't create that emotion again – it's impossible. “

The bulk of discussion I found on this topic centered on art conservation. With current techniques most pieces can be repaired even in cases of extreme damage. However, parties with a vested interest in recovering a piece - the conservationist, collector, gallery owner or museum curator - aren’t the best ones to decide how to proceed. It’s the artist’s call whether the original should be fixed or done over.

For example, Hirst has said, “I frequently work on things after a collector has them,’’ the artist said. “I recently called a collector who owns a fly painting because I didn’t like the way it looked, so I changed it slightly.’’

(As an aside, a really interesting point was that this object vs. idea preservation idea will come up more and more in the coming years due to artists in our time using degradable materials such as grass, animal parts or human blood.)

Answer - If an artist decides the message behind a piece is more valuable than the object itself, and that the meaning of the work is still clearly conveyed in the restored piece, then it is considered to be equal to the original. If an object is the focus of the piece then a restoration or replacement would be considered just that.