Damien Hirst and the dates that don’t add up
Guardian investigations correspondent Maeve McClenaghan discusses her investigation into some of the work of the artist Damien Hirst that has been dated to the 1990s, years before it was actually made. Art critic Jonathan Jones discusses the impact Hirst’s work has had on him
The Guardian investigative reporter Maeve McClenaghan tells Today in Focus host Michael Safi about four Damien Hirst sculptures that were made by preserving animals in formaldehyde that appear to have been dated by his company to the 1990s even though they were made in 2017.
Hirst also produced 10,000 paintings for a series called The Currency, each comprising colourful hand-painted dots on A4 paper. It was born from the idea of creating a form of money from art. At least 1,000 paintings that Hirst said were “made in 2016” were created several years later, McClenaghan has also found.
Art critic Jonathan Jones tells Safi about the impact that Hirst had on his career. In creating sculptures backdated to the days when Hirst’s art electrified the world, Jones believes the former Young British Artist has cast doubt on his youthful legacy and destroyed belief in his creative future.
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