Name: The Dead (loganberry pink, oriental gold)
Brand: Damien Hirst
Rating: 5 (231 reviews)

Meaning & Analysis

The Dead (loganberry pink, oriental gold) is a signed foil block print in colours on Arches paper produced by renowned contemporary artist, Damien Hirst. The print shows a large skull which Hirst renders in a dark loganberry pink with hints of deep oriental gold. The bold colours of the skull contrast with the simple, plain white backdrop of the composition.

The print, made in 2009, is part of the artist’s The Dead series, which is composed of thirty-one prints, all of which depict a colourful skull. The Dead series resonates with other series, such as I Once Was What You Are, You Will Be What I Am (2007) and Memento (2008), which similarly take the image of a skull as their inspiration. Alongside the skull, Hirst often uses diamonds and butterflies in his artworks to explore questions of life and death

Hirst has had a long-standing interest in the subject of death. When the artist was sixteen, he would visit the anatomy department of Leeds Medical School to produce life drawings of the bodies he found there. Similarly, the artist produced an installation of medicine cabinets while studying Fine Art at Goldsmiths in the 1980s, which explored the interaction between the human body and modern medicine and the way medicine has become a contemporary belief system, alongside religion.