Damien Herst forces us to look death in the eye with his art piece from 1991, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. Simply put, the discomforting piece consists of a fourteen foot tiger shark stationed in a large tank of formaldehyde. To the eye, it is creepy and may send shivers down your spine, but to the mind, it will raise concern about ethical, cultural, and economic values of today’s society. The art piece is worth multiple millions of dollars however the philosophical conversations it has created may be priceless. In this article we will dissect various themes such as our society’s conversion of nature and art into capitalism, as well as other cultural values that are inherently unethical.
Although the life of the Australian shark wasn’t sacrificed for this art piece, it forces us to rethink the line between our appreciation of nature in art and our exploitation of it. We seem to use every possible opportunity to make money for ourselves even if it entails disrupting the natural circle of life. This raises the question of what our cultural values have come to be. What do we really deem valuable in our society, is it only items that have monetary value? This art piece and its monetary value showcases how even nature has been made into a commodity, and how the intentions of art works have gotten misconstrued and replaced with big price tags. We tend to focus much more of our time on objects and capturing them with a monetary value rather than creating experiences for ourselves in the present. Our society has become consumed with the desire to own things no matter what literal or figurative cost they come at.
The piece is also an exhibit of how our species has a hard time allowing things to happen organically anymore, we love to have control over everything. One of the only things that we cannot control, however, is death. Its inevitability drives us crazy which has brought us to the process of taxidermy. The entire idea of taxidermy has come to be because of people refusing to let go of things that are naturally supposed to be gone, taken by death. This shark accentuates our need for material representation of death due to the disconnect between our ideas of what it means to be dead and the physical state of it, because we cannot physically or mentally understand.
Art is supposed to make us think, and raise uncomfortable conversations, which is exactly what The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living does. We are confronted with our values regarding art, how the original intentions and ideas behind pieces have become somewhat lost and what shallow things they’ve been replaced with. This shark is a 14 foot exhibit of those problems which our society possesses.
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I think that this article and this art piece does a great job or making people question where the line should be drawn when it comes to the exploitation of death. I have always found taxidermy to be unsettling. I can understand the importance of displaying fossils in museums because they are there for the purpose of learning. I think that this artwork is crossing an ethical line by displaying this shark after death. I think it is a really interesting point that death is inevitable which is scary to people because we feel the need to be in control at all times. I have never thought about how using death in an art form is a way of taking control of the uncontrollable. But maybe these uncontrollable things are not meant to be controlled.
This article does a great job getting introspective on the collective materialism that is so deeply engraved in our culture. I think this a great point in highlighting the unethical practice of displaying and altering dead animals. This is not something they asked for, and it also brings to mind fossils. While taxidermy is much more of a violation of a dead organism, having fossils on display is so common nowadays. These fossils can be seen in museums everywhere, but with the same argument that taxidermy is unethical, the display of fossils and skeletons is also unethical even if it is for education because there is “consent” from the animal. This also reminds me of Saartjie Baartman, a woman with a unique figure that led her to be highly sexualized and put on display for people to see even after her death despite her request not to.
I think that this article analyzes the overlap between art, nature, and capitalism in a way that raises important ethical questions. An Australian shark is an important piece of an ecosystem during all stages of life, including death. After death, the shark’s body is decomposed by organisms, who need its nutrients, and return the shark’s nutrients back into the environment and restart the cycle of life. The process of even removing the shark’s body should be considered unethical as it disrupts the environment and its natural processes, but to hear that this art piece was created to be sold for millions of dollars makes this situation even more unethical. Nature, in my opinion, should be thought of and considered as art; it is beautiful, it is sustainable, it is knowledgeable, and it keeps us alive. People should be more concerned with protecting our environment and promoting sustainability than owning a figurative piece of art that represents a stage of life we will all be forced into at some point in time.