Saint Damian Hirst

V0033576 Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Saint Cosmas and Saint Damina. Photograph with gouache of statues in Salisbury cathedral

Damien Hirst is widely known for his sensational art and provocative media appearances. To the pharmacy community, the artist is perhaps best known for his controversial Notting Hill restaurant ‘Pharmacy’ which courted legal action by the then Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. Damien Hirst re-visits this venture with a new restaurant (Pharmacy2) that recently opened in his new London gallery. (Szu Shen Wong, a Research Fellow with the School of Pharmacy, blogged about it for the Pharmaceutical Journal )

In a pioneering collaboration between the School of Pharmacy and Department of History of Art, Szu Shen Wong and Mark Rawlinson (Associate Professor, History of Art) offers a novel perspective as to why Damien Hirst appears to have a preoccupation with Pharmacy in an article published in the journal Kunstlicht. The article explores how Hirst portrays the persona of a pharmacist and reveals his 'saintly' side by relating his self-portraits as a pharmacist to his namesake, Saint Damian.

Image:

http://wellcomeimages.org

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V0033576

Credit: Wellcome Library, London

Saint Cosmas (Left) and Saint Damian (Right). Saint Damian is depicted holding a pestle and mortar, the traditional symbol for pharmacy. Photograph with gouache of statues on the west front of Salisbury Cathedral.