A Rapturous Pairing
British artist Damien Hirst’s takeover of a French vineyard pushes the boundaries of good taste.
Tadao Ando, Gate, installed at Chateau La Coste © Andrew Pattma
Strange figures will tower over the picturesque Provençal landscape at the Château La Coste wine estate this spring. Among the flowering vineyards, cypresses, stone pines, olive trees, and oaks, a 22-foot-tall girl with a blond bob and a gloomy expression clutches a teddy bear. Elsewhere, a partially dissected 21-foot-tall man gazes across the grounds, his brain and other organs exposed to the elements.
These eerie sentinels aren’t supersized scarecrows—they’re monumental sculptures by celebrated British artist Damien Hirst, namely Charity (2002–03) and Temple (2008). From March 2 through June 23, the 58-year-old iconoclast and Turner Prize–winner is taking over the 500-acre estate near Aix-en-Provence with his exhibition The Light That Shines, a herculean effort never before undertaken by a solo artist.
Damien Hirst photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2023
Hirst has delighted in shocking the public since he catapulted to notoriety in the 1990s as the poster boy of the so-called Young British Artists, or YBAs. His ongoing series Natural History, started in 1991, features animal carcasses suspended in vats of formaldehyde. Three decades later, it continues to repulse and seduce viewers in equal measure. A select few of these unappetizing works, including 2003’s The Ascension (a cow) and 2008’s Heaven (a shark) are on view in the Château La Coste’s Renzo Piano Pavilion.
Damien Hirst, Heaven, 2008. Glass, painted stainless steel, stainless steel, silicone, monofilament, shark and formaldehyde solution. 84.3 x 151 x 55.8 in (2140 x 3836 x 1418 mm). Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2023
Another kind of submerged monster—the 12-foot-tall Monk, a coral-encrusted, cross-legged giant holding his head in his hands—appears to have been dredged up from the ocean’s depths and placed in the shallow pool at the Château’s Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium. This bronze and other sculptures formed part of Hirst’s 2017 exhibition Treasures From the Wreck of the Unbelievable, which was first installed in ritzy palazzos at that year’s Venice Biennale.
Damien Hirst, Children of a Dead King, 2010. Bronze. 77.8 x 54.4 x 35.1 in (1977 x 1383 x 891 mm). Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2023
It’s not just Hirst’s most iconic and enormous works on view at Château La Coste. The veteran artist is seizing the opportunity to debut a number of series never previously shown. Adorning the walls of the Richard Rogers gallery are kaleidoscopic compositions of red-and-black butterfly wings: Hirst’s The Empresses (2022), which are named for notable female figures from history. Screen-printed with crimson glitter, they teeter on the brink of garishness.
Damien Hirst, Koken / Eleanor / Livia / Ying / Mentewab, 2023. Paint, oil ink and paper on canvas. Five panels, each: 84 x 84 in (2134 x 2134 mm). Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2023
In the Old Store Winehouse, designed by Jean-Michel Wilmotte, Hirst’s Cosmos Paintings, inspired by images from the Hubble Space Telescope, are presented alongside sculptures from his Satellites and Meteorites series. In the latter, the maverick artist dabbles in mock profundity by placing misshapen lumps of bronze on pedestals and labelling them as rocks from outer space.
Despite achieving success at a scale as colossal as his creations—Hirst is one of the world’s wealthiest artists—his in-your-face, prankster attitude toward the self-seriousness of the art world has never lessened. “Amid laughs and giggles, chats and cups of tea, great ideas evolved as they do when Damien is his playful self,” says Château La Coste founder Paddy McKillen, a close friend of the artist’s, on the origins of the show’s conception. McKillen notes that Hirst’s “paintings and sculpture, set in our galleries and this nature will come together to create one singular masterpiece.”
The least incongruous inclusion in the Château La Coste exhibition is perhaps Hirst’s most recent series, The Secret Gardens Paintings (2023), which can be found in the Bastide Gallery. Depicting fields of flowers in ecstatic bloom, the canvases are splattered with paint to create the effect of “pollen, or something that feels like an assault on the senses,” Hirst has explained. For the former enfant terrible obsessed with the macabre–this is an artist who once exhibited two copulating, rotting cow carcasses–an allergic reaction to pollen feels spectacularly tame. Hirst first started exploring the subject of gardens while working alone during lockdown. So why the unexpected turn toward the twee? “My mum used to say, ‘There’s enough horror in the world, why can’t you just paint flowers?’ Hirst says. “So maybe she got to me.”
