On the Way to Work [Hardcover]

Damien Hirst (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 5, 2001

Immediately recognised for his brilliant, sordid and uncompromising imagination, Damien Hirst is the most celebrated artist Britain has produced for generations. The undisputed leader and originator of the dominant movement in contemporary art on both sides of the Atlantic, he is now so ingrained in the public consciousness that even people with only a passing interest in art are familiar with his notorious shark and pickled sheep. What few people outside his immediate circle know are his brilliance as a talker, and the incisiveness and uniquely skewed nature of his mind. Gordon Burn met Hirst for the first time nine years ago. They both admired David Sylvester's interviews with Francis Bacon and Jan Wenner's interviews with John Lennon, and there was always an unspoken understanding between them that they would do something similar when the time was right. The resulting conversations in Gambler are electrifyingly candid. True to the undertaking Hirst gave Burn, there is no off-limits: here are Hirst's thoughts on celebrity, money, art, alcohol, sex, death, the North of England, class, crime and cocaine; his views on Charles Saatchi, David Bowie, David Hockney, Salman Rushdie, Jarvis Cocker, Gilbert and George and Lucian Freud. More than any other individual, Damien Hirst's art and life came to define the nineties. Like the generation he has become the spokesman for, Gambler is brave, unpredictable, scabrously funny and corrosively intelligent. It is also a how-to guide to becoming the most famous artist in the world.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Damien Hirst and his friend, the writer Gordon Burn, provide in On the Way to Work a fascinating window into the mind of one of the most successful artists of the turn of the 21st century. The book, which is beautifully produced, illustrated, and typeset, is a collection of interviews, the first on the eve of Hirst's first major exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London--when he unveiled his infamous shark suspended in a vat of formaldehyde (1991's wonderfully titled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. While the book is certainly skewed toward the later years (one interview in January 1992, one in April 1996, three in 1999, and seven in 2000), the reader does get a broad overview of how Hirst's relationships to life, art, and money have progressed. Hirst's fame, his spearheading of the YBA (young British artists) phenomenon, and his subsequent exposure in the gossip columns with the well-documented, and inevitable, drug and drink stories, are all fully covered here. But it is Hirst's genuinely profound artistic imagination and insight that best come across: his obsession with death--and with needing to prove his talent as a way to be immortalized in order to escape death--and his ambivalence toward art (the kind of ambivalence much of the public itself exhibits toward modern art) are key here. Also illuminating is Hirst's respect and admiration for Francis Bacon, as well as our discovery of Hirst's skill as a raconteur. If most visual artists show a disappointing inability to discuss their creations, Hirst, at least, shows an enviable ability to tell a divertingly good story: proof, if any were needed, of his working-class roots and his fidelity towards them (surely only the middle classes would see the selling of the fruit of their artistic labors as selling out).

Hirst, candidly, sees the art world as always part of the work and space of art, and it is a part he sometimes enjoys, sometimes struggles with, and whose successes he has rightly benefited from. In 1996 Hirst displayed the body of a cow cut up and suspended in 12 vitrines. The piece was called Some Comfort Gained from the Acceptance of the Inherent Lies in Everything. Hirst seems to have decided that the inevitability of death, so futilely hidden by a society obsessed with youth and health, is the only truth--or rather, perhaps, the only incisive fact that may help us to fully live now and eschew those lies in which we all swim and in which we are always in danger of drowning. On the Way to Work is an excellent book and much recommended to anyone who has been fascinated by the sudden rise in the visibility of modern art and what it has to say about society at the beginning of the 21st century. --Mark Thwaite, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Review

'I want it to be revealing. I'll talk about anything you like. I want it to be truthful. Let's do it. There is no off-limits. I'm afraid of nothing.'

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber (November 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571202578
• ISBN-13: 978-0571202577
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,543,819 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars bad boy tells all, June 13, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: On the Way to Work (Hardcover)

ON THE WAY TO WORK is not a book of interviews so much as a collection of Damien Hirst's angry rants on everything from art school to art dealers, Kurt Schwitters to Francis Bacon, drink, drugs, decay . . . and art. "I feel I've opened a can of worms in my own head," the artist states at one point. True enough.

Hirst is at his best playing enfant-terrible/raconteur, spitting out stories of a hardscrabble childhood and grand-guignol adolescence, rejecting the polite aesthetics of art school, and raging against the vapidity of an art world that would use his creative rage for its own amusement. At their best, Hirst's rants can be of a piece with his art: visceral, gut-wrenching, profoundly disturbing. Yet at times he simply prattles on ad nauseum.

Rather than rein the artist in, interviewer Gordon Burn lets Hirst flail wildly, challenging him only when directly taunted; and Hirst seems to desire nothing so much as a loud pub brawl with a worthy adversary. Burn's polite questioning proves no match for his subject's wry vitriol and relentless bombast.

What both Hirst and Burn understand quite clearly is the infuriating, mind-numbing business of celebrity, and its potential for warping an artist's work. In this respect, the book's first interview, dating from 1992, is heartbreaking: it's a talk with a precocious, cocky, smart Damien Hirst, just before he tumbled into the voracious maw of the international art scene. The subsequent interviews are often meandering and unfocused -- but not without some cynically brilliant bits.

This portrait of an artist careening into jaded middle age is wildly entertaining at times, but it will certainly disappoint any readers hoping for profound insights on contemporary British art. At one point during an interview tirade, the artist opines: "You're either angry or you're boring." With ON THE WAY TO WORK, Damien Hirst manages to have it both ways.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Having a Pint with Damien., September 3, 2008

By 

MV (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: On the Way to Work (Hardcover)

'On the Way to Work' is many things.
It is a collection of conversations between Burn and Hirst. The conversations range from Hirst's love for Francis Bacon, to grumblings on his dealings with the media.
But perhaps most importantly, 'On the Way to Work' is Hirst's manifesto. It is an insight into how he views his own art.
This book is a great buy. If you are interested in Hirst, this book is essential.

(For those looking for a book that showcases Hirst's art, I would recommend the fantastic: 'I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere...' )

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars -conversation sensation!-, January 21, 2002

By 

"plasticheart" (Ga) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On the Way to Work (Hardcover)

I would recommend this book for only the deepest of Damien Hirst fans. It is mostly dialogue and photographs of him in his normal settings. The text is very interesting...I become so inspired I put it down immediately, and begin working on something. The book shows a realistic view into a truly remarkable artists mind.