Pharmacy
Pharmacy
Signed Print
Damien Hirst
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Medium: Lithograph
Edition size: 200
Year: 1992
Size: H 22cm x W 22cm
Signed: Yes
Format: Signed Print
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Auction Results
| Auction Date | Auction House | Location | Hammer Price | Return to Seller | Buyer Paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 2025 | Bukowskis, Stockholm | Sweden | |||
| June 2022 | Phillips New York | United States | |||
| May 2021 | Bonhams New York | United States | |||
| November 2018 | Freeman's | United States | |||
| July 2018 | Sotheby's New York | United States | |||
| May 2015 | Artcurial | France | |||
| June 2012 | Cornette de Saint Cyr Paris | France |
Meaning & Analysis
Pharmacy is a print by Damien Hirst from 1992, signed and published in an edition of 200. The print shows a photograph of Hirst’s site-specific work of the same name, first shown in 1992 at the Cohen Gallery in New York. The original work was a true to life sized installation of a pharmacy, using materials like shelved cabinets and objects representing pharmaceutical drugs.
Hirst has said of his pharmaceutical works, “I’ve always seen medicine cabinets as bodies, but also like a cityscape or civilisation, with some sort of hierarchy within it. It’s also like a contemporary museum of the Middle Ages. In a hundred years time this will look like an old apothecary. A museum of something that’s around today.”
Much of Hirst’s oeuvre, including Pharmacy, is reminiscent of the work of Marcel Duchamp and his ‘ready-mades’. Taking images and objects from the everyday and hardly making any alterations, Hirst confronts the viewer with questions around what makes something art? Is an object considered an art object because it sits in a museum? Both the original installation of Pharmacy and the printed editions epitomise this notion of the ready-made, bringing true-to-life medicine cabinets and the setting of a pharmacy into the museum space.
Damien Hirst, born in Bristol in 1965, is often hailed the enfant terrible of the contemporary art world. His provocative works challenge conventions and his conceptual brilliance spans installations, paintings, and sculptures, often exploring themes of mortality and the human experience. As a leading figure of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement in the late '80s, Hirst's work has dominated the British art scene for decades and has become renowned for being laced with controversy, thus shaping the dialogue of modern art.