Marc Quinn

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For the American baseball player, see Mark Quinn.

Marc Quinn (born 1964) is a British artist, perhaps best known for Alison Lapper Pregnant, a statue of Alison Lapper which has been installed on the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square, Self, a sculpture of his head made with his own frozen blood, and Garden (2000). He is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) and is known for his innovative use of materials to make art, including blood, ice, faeces, etc., his use of bringing scientific developments into art, and his designs for "discussion-generating" artworks.

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[edit] Background

Quinn was born in London in 1964. He studied history and the history of art at Robinson College, Cambridge. He worked as an assistant to the sculptor Barry Flanagan.

He was not represented in the 1988 Damien Hirst-curated Freeze exhibition which brought the YBAs together for the first time (although he did at one time share a flat with Hirst). Quinn emerged in the early 1990s. He was the first artist represented by Jay Jopling, and was exhibited in Charles Saatchi's defining Sensation.

[edit] Selected artworks

[edit] Self (1991)

Quinn's signature piece in the art world is Self, a frozen sculpture of the artist's head made from 10 pints of his own blood, taken from his body over a period of 5 months[citation needed]. This he did in his late 20s. In interview in 2000, reflecting on the iconic artwork, he remarked, "Well, I think it’s a great sculpture. I’m really happy with it. I think it is inevitable that you have one piece people focus in on. But that's really good because it gets people into the work."[1]

Self, like many other pieces by the YBAs, was bought by Charles Saatchi (in 1991 for a reputed £13,000). The press reported in 2002 that the sculpture had been destroyed by builders employed to expand the kitchen for Saatchi's partner, the celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, when they unplugged the freezer in which it was being stored (it has to be kept at -12C/10F). This would seem to have been unfounded, however, as the piece was exhibited intact by Saatchi when he opened his new gallery in London in 2003. In April, 2005, Self was sold to a US collector for £1.5m. [2]

[edit] Garden (2000)

His next important piece in terms of his public profile was the frozen garden he made for Miuccia Prada in 2000, installed at Fondazione Prada in Milan, Italy. A whole garden full of plants which could never grow together kept in cryogenic suspension. In interview, Quinn explained how this worked, "When working with the frozen material, it’s like doing an experiment—different things come out of it. When you freeze something, it normally dries up. To avoid that, you have to stop the air from getting to the object. You can do this by casing it in [silicone]."[3]

[edit] Portrait of John E. Sulston (2001)

His portrait of John E. Sulston, who won the Nobel prize in 2002 for sequencing the human genome on the Human Genome Project[4], is in the National Portrait Gallery. It consists of bacteria containing Sulston's DNA in agar jelly. "The portrait was made by our standard methods for DNA cloning," writes Sulston. "My DNA was broken randomly into segments, and treated so that they could be replicated in bacteria. The bacteria containing the DNA segments were spread out on agar jelly in the plate you see in the portrait." [5]

[edit] Marble sculptures of disabled persons

Quinn has made a series of marble sculptures of people either born with limbs missing or who have had them amputated. This culminated in his 15 ton marble statue of Alison Lapper, a woman born with no arms and severely shortened legs, which was displayed on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, London, in autumn 2007. (The Fourth Plinth is used for rotating displays of sculpture.) In Disability Studies Quarterly, Ann Millett writes in the abstract of her research article, "The work has been highly criticized for capitalizing on the shock value of disability, as well as lauded for its progressive social values. Alison Lapper Pregnant and the controversy surrounding it showcase disability issues at the forefront of current debates in contemporary art."[6]

[edit] Artworks depicting Kate Moss

In April 2006, Sphinx, a sculpture of Kate Moss by Quinn was revealed [7]. The sculpture shows Moss in a yoga position with her ankles and arms wrapped behind her ears. This body of work culminated in an exhibition at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York in May 2007. The scuplture is on permanent display in "Folketeatert" in Oslo.

In August 2008, Quinn unveiled another sculpture of Kate Moss, this time in solid gold, called Siren, which was exhibited in the British Museum, London. The sculpture was promoted as "the largest gold statue since ancient Egypt"[8] Siren was identified as using a similar strategy as Damien Hirst's diamond skull with its expensive use of material which could be dismantled if necessary, or in this case melted down, with the artworks as material investment plus added-value artist branding. It was also identified as containing several elements, including the celebrity subject matter and sensation-inducing pose, which accelerate media coverage.[8]

[edit] Personal life

He is married to author Georgia Byng and has two children.[9]

[edit] References

  1. ^ (2000). Just a load of shock?: An interview with Marc Quinn, Sculpture magazine.
  2. ^ Higgins, Charlotte. (21 April 2005). 'Saatchi Sells Britart Classic for £1.5m'. The Guardian. Retrieved 12 June 2009.
  3. ^ (2000). Just a load of shock?: An interview with Marc Quinn, Sculpture magazine.
  4. ^ Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute website (7 October 2002). Retrieved 2 January 2010.
  5. ^ Jones, Jonathan. (22 September 2001). John Sulston, Marc Quinn (2001), The Guardian. Retrieved 2 January 2010.
  6. ^ Millett, Ann. (2008)."Sculpting Body Ideals: Alison Lapper Pregnant and the Public Display of Disability", Disability Studies Quarterly, 28(3). Retrieved 2 January 2010.
  7. ^ BBC News. (13 April 2006). 'Model Moss cast in bronze statue' Retrieved 16 January 2010.
  8. ^ a b Preece, R.J. (March 2009). Rock star on tour: Damien Hirst at the Rijksmuseum, Sculpture magazine.
  9. ^ "The new Marc Quinn". Times Online, January 22, 2008. Retrieved on February 28, 2008.

[edit] External links

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