Damien Hirst, from Enfant Terrible to Artistic Baby

Damien Hirst has been known for years as the enfant terrible of contemporary art. His works, among them diamond-encrusted skulls and sharks in formaldehyde, have for decades been generating controversy

Photo: Damien Hirst in the work Baby Artists (Paul, Maurizio, Damien), by Valter Casotto. At Opera Gallery. 

Damien Hirst has been known for years as the enfant terrible of contemporary art. His works, among them diamond-encrusted skulls and sharks in formaldehyde, have for decades been generating controversy, success and money. These days the American artist is in the news once again, but in this case the work of art is… him. The artist Valter Casotto has reproduced his image as an “adult baby” in his work Baby Arists (Paul, Maurizio, Damien), which forms part of the Beyond Reality exhibition at the Opera Gallery in London. In the work, Damien Hirst shares a playroom with two of his most illustrious contemporaries, Maurizio Cattelan and Paul Mc Carthy, returned, like him, to a rather unsettling childhood.

Photo: Baby Artists (Paul, Maurizio, Damien), by Valter Casotto. Beyond Reality exhibition. At Opera Gallery. 

Little Hirst appears surrounded by toys cut to his size: sharks, cows and a miniature butterfly, recurring motifs in his particular imagery. Casotto, who has worked as a prosthetic make-up artist on films such as the Harry Potter series or The Hobbit, used techniques and materials common in Hollywood productions to achieve a striking result. The heads of the “baby artists” (whose faces are identical to those of the sitters) display a disquieting disproportion with the children’s bodies. In Beyond Reality, Casotto’s work shares space with an excellent selection of pieces by the best and most influential hyperrealist artists working today.

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