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1st Edition
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- Artists
- Hirst, Damien
 - Edition Details
| Year: | 1991 | | Class: | Other | | Status: | Official | | Released: | 08/30/91 | | Run: | 1 | | Technique: | Original Mixed Media | | Size: | 252 X 84 |
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Damien Hirst's "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" was created in 1991. It is a 14-foot (4.3 m) taxidermy tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a vitrine. It weighs over 2 tons and was prepared and mounted by technicians under the direction of Damien Hirst. Hirst described the idea of the shark in an interview in the first-ever edition of Frieze magazine: "I like the idea of a thing to describe a feeling. A shark is frightening, bigger than you are, in an environment unknown to you. It looks alive when it's dead and dead when it's alive".
This piece became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s. It was originally commissioned in 1991 by Charles Saatchi for $75,000, who sold it in 2004 for $12 million, making Hirst at the time the second most expensive living artist after Jasper Johns. Due to deterioration of the original 14-foot tiger shark, it was replaced with a new specimen in 2006. The shark chosen to replace the original was injected with 224 gallons of formaldehyde, ten times the amount used on the first shark and in a stronger concentration. It is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City until 2010.
Mixed media: Glass, steel, silicone, tiger shark and 5% formaldehyde
Death is a central them in Hirst's works.
Related artworks in Damien Hirst's Natural History Series include "The Death of God" and "The Wrath of God".
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