From Medicine Cabinets to Pill Cabinets, Damien Hirst’s Cathedrals Built on Sand is a reminder of drug addiction and an unconventional artistic practice.

BY KAZAD

PARIS, FRANCE -Cathedrals Built on Sand, the largest exhibition of Damien Hirst’s Pill Cabinets to date, exposes how beauty, lust, and allure of pills make them irresistible to many people.  At the Gagosian Paris, the show was realized in conjunction with Cherry Blossoms presently on view at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris. This is Hirst’s first solo museum exhibition in France.  

Cathedrals Built on Sand is a landmark exhibition that brings together the whole Pill Cabinets sculptural series in one place. Walking through the exhibition gives the feeling of strolling through an open and expansive drugstore with so many eye candies. There are Medication Cabinets and Pill Cabinets everywhere.

Dreamland Fantasy Of An Addict

Pills Cabinets is a convergence of art and science. Damien Hirst filled wall-mounted cabinets with arrangements of pills — some real, some fabricated from resin, metal, or plaster. The installations of the Pill Cabinets are so realistic that viewers will mistake them for the real thing.  Some viewers may even feel uncomfortable because they become voyeurs rummaging through people’s private medicine cabinets in this space.

Cathedrals Built on Sand is the dreamland fantasy of an Addict.  It is difficult to overlook the significance of Pill Cabinets to contemporary issues of drug addiction. Although Damien Hirst started creating the series many years ago, they are still relevant today. They are reminders of the recent opioid crisis that has claimed thousands of lives across the United States. From oxycodone to morphine, and fentanyl, the endless need for pills continues to ravage souls across the country.

Pill Cabinets are even more germane to recent conversations about addiction. For many young people, drug addiction starts with raiding the medicine and pill cabinets at home. Data has shown that teenagers start out in drug addiction by stealing their parents’ medication or those that belong to family members. They soon graduate to the next level of drug addiction by stealing medications from neighbors and forging prescriptions.

Pill Cabinets and Drug Addiction

Aesthetically, there is something about the pills in the Pill Cabinets that make them irresistible: the colors, arrangements, packaging, and shapes make them tempting. It is like looking at a pantry filled with goodies.

The sheer number of pills in each cabinet will make anyone wonder how many pills people have to take daily.  But more importantly, it raises awareness about the commodification of healthcare. Wherever one turns, there is one pill factory handing out pills to people or some pharmacy with shelves filled with colorful and well-arranged medications. There is temptation everywhere.  Added to the equation are the dazzling, family-oriented, and alluring commercials of medications that are constantly streaming on television. Many of these commercials are filled with false innuendos.    

Are pharmaceutical drugs fetish objects everyone should lust after?

It is not surprising that many people have become obsessed with and addicted to medication. Pill Cabinets present pharmaceutical drugs as a sort of fetish object everyone should lust after. Out of their packages, the pills become multicolored candy. They are seductively alluring to people who have put their whole being and survival in the almighty pills and faceless medical institutions that dictate their well-being. 

The attractive and seductive nature of medication is evident in Prototype for Lies (1998), one of the works in the show. This is the first work created in the Pill Cabinets series.  It features open fiberboard shelves that seem to guide the viewer’s gaze to the beautifully arranged medications in their gorgeous packages. The sterile grid of pills on the fiberboard shelves radiates warmth and elegance, alluring enough to make anyone want to reach out for a taste.

With this exhibition, Hirst examines the limits of human belief and confronts society’s faith in drugs as a panacea. “I can’t understand why most people believe in medicine and don’t believe in art, without questioning either,” noted the artist. Understanding human devotions and reliance on drugs as a universal remedy has been Hirst’s quest for almost three decades. Pill Cabinets evolved from Hirst’s earlier series, which he called Medicine Cabinets. For this series, the artists arranged empty pharmaceutical packages on shelves in a manner mimetic of what one might see at a drugstore.

When the works went on display for the first time in 1989, they were activated by viewers who lined up in front of the sculptures as if in a drugstore trying to get their medications. This connectivity between viewers and sculpture inextricably linked the human experience and the need for drugs.

Between Medicine Cabinets and Pill Cabinets

While there are many similarities with Medicine Cabinets, Pill Cabinets are different in many ways.  One major difference is in the arrangement. Unlike Medicine Cabinets, the artist explores playful chromatic variations that are more striking and realistic. The simple shapes and rounded edges of the capsules at the heart of each work are outstanding.

The transition from Medicine Cabinets to Pill Cabinets shows continuity in Hirst’s affinity with pills and an unconventional artistic career.  Pills have been a part of the artist’s artistic vocabulary for years. Hirst’s fascination with pills is their inherent power to convince.  He is also attracted by their symbolic combination of remedy and risk, making them an ideal subject for his dichotomous focus.

Hirst is from the Young British Artists (YBA), a group that gained notoriety with the Sensation exhibition in the 1990s.  The artists in the group are daring, open to new ideas of art, and using unconventional materials. Several others, like Hirst, explore shock tactics in their work. As a unit, they transformed contemporary British art and ushered in a novel artistic language built on rebellion and audacity.

Hirst began gaining the attention of the art world soon after graduating from Goldsmiths, the University of London in 1989. He was the focus of attention during the degree show in 1989. This was where he first exhibited the “Medicines” series. Included in the show were the first four of a series of 12 cabinets he produced using empty medication packages. To create the works, the artists had to go around pharmacies and drugstores around his London home to get drug packages and containers.

Damien Hirst Sensation

Even at that early stage, Hirst was unique in his approach to art.  He was one of the artists that stood out during the Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection show at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999.  The museum described Hirst thus:

Damien Hirst, perhaps Britain’s best-known artist of this generation, who is now recognized throughout the world for his work, composed of sections of animals, such as sharks, lambs, and cows, preserved and presented in sealed, formaldehyde-filled glass containers.

Years after his first outing, Hirst continues to make an impact in the art world with what many consider thought-provoking artworks.  He is also making record sales at auctions. In 2008, The Golden Calf, a dead calf in a tank of formaldehyde sold for 13.4 million at auction. It was an auction record for the artist.

With the demand for Hirst’s works and the money they are making at the auction, collectors are already speculating how much it will cost to buy one of the Pill Cabinets.  There is no doubt that they will be in the millions. A clear indicator is Bodies, one of the early Medicine Cabinets that went on sale at the Phillips Auction house in February 2020. The piece sold for £1,368,600. Bodies was originally bought for £600 ($782) in 1989 by collector Robert Tibbles. The doorless medicine cabinets packed with everything from Optrex eye drops to Dioralyte rehydration sachets raised many eyebrows.

Robert Tibbles and Charles Saatchi Patronized Damien Hirst

Tibbles and Charles Saatchi, the advertising tycoon, were the early courageous collectors of Hirst’s works. Tibbles, who was just a 28-old city trader at the time, saw a lot of relevance in Hirst’s works and supported him by buying some of his works, including Bodies. For this magnanimous gesture, his friends ridiculed him and let him know that what he bought was worthless.

Despite condemnations and mockery, Tibbles held on to Bodies and cherished it.  For his devotion to uniqueness, Tibbles got the last laugh. When Bodies came up for auction in 2020, it had an estimate of £1,200,000-1,800,000 ($1.6 million-$2.3 million). The piece was part of Tibbles’ entire collection with six other works by Hirst, including Antipyrylazo III (1994), a piece featuring 2,050 hand-painted spots. There was also a butterfly painting called Summer Breeze and a spin artwork titled Beautiful tropical, jungle painting. Also in the collection were works by Michael Craig-Martin and Gilbert & George.

In Pills Cabinets, we see Hirst’s influences through the years. There is a synthesis of post-Minimalist forms with Pop art-inspired commentary on commercial goods. Hirst’s clever mergence of strip-down sculptural forms and what he calls “minimalist delicious color,” evokes the industrial origins of Gerhard Richter’s color charts, as well as the intimacy and seriality of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s candy arrangements. There are also elements of the readymade in the Marcel Duchamp tradition in the collection.  

Pill Cabinets in Cathedrals Built on Sand

Cathedrals Built on Sand is a reminder of Hirst’s artistic journey. From that humble beginning in 1989, the artist has grown to become one the famous artists of his generation. Along the way, there have praises and condemnation. However, what has remained constant is the artist’s commitment to his art and ideas. Despite disapproval, he has remained true to himself, creating works that make people cringe and challenge his professional calling.  

Through the years, Hirst has remained steadfast in using everyday materials to shocking effect. Each work is an interrogation of the meaning of art and what constitutes art. The Pill Cabinets on display in this show are important examples of how the artist permits himself to create unfettered. Clearly, the guiding question fostering Hirst’s creativity is not why but why not?  That is why he continues to appropriate what is commonly found in homes and stores to create art that is both confrontational and appealing.

What do you thinks about Damien Hirst’s Pill Cabinets and art. Join the conversation. Leave a comment.