Death and a Shark

Startling fact: everyone who has experienced death is dead. Perhaps you’ve taken it for granted, and perhaps it sounds natural to you. Yet if you take a second and let it sink in, the shock begins to form. We all know of death in our minds. We understand the existence of it, but in truth, we are physically incapable of understanding death. For how can one understand what one has never experienced? This is the message modern artist Daniel Hirst seeks to make known to us. Using object, title, and setting, Daniel Hirst emphasizes the impossibility for someone living to understand death.

In the picture, Daniel Hirst uses setting to communicate his theme. He uses a dead shark in a glass tank to show that it is impossible for someone who is alive to understand the concept of death. The setting acts as a boundary to keep us from understanding the concept of death. If, the shark was alive, it would come out and eat the viewers. However, the tank would act as a barrier to keep us safe from the shark. The only way to truly understand death is to experience it, and if you experience it, you die. The setting/tank keeps the viewers alive (if the shark was alive) which prevents us from experiencing and understanding death.

From the title of his artwork, we can already see what Damien Hirst is trying to communicate to us through his masterpiece. The title, which is “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”, shouts the artist’s idea loud and clear. We can see through it that Damien Hirst wanted to tell us that it is impossible for someone living to comprehend the complete idea of death, since after we die, we cannot just go back and tell people what it was like to die. Also, the fact that an artist would state something as the title means that it is very important. Overall, it is clear that Hirst’s title is his main idea and theme.

In the artwork, the subject and the biggest portion of it is a dead shark. As there is only one object within the whole piece, it can be assumed that the author wanted us to focus on it. When we look at the piece, we can see a dead shark. When we see that shark, we understand that it is dead, but we still do not truly understand death itself.

Although we can see death, we have no idea of how to truly comprehend it. Hirst uses the subject to make us think of this concept. No matter how hard we think, we can never understand death, because we have never experienced it, and if we experienced it, we would be dead, and therefore, unable to comprehend it. The artist uses the object of the picture to make us go on this train of thought, and therefore, he uses the subject to help us understand that death is incomprehensible for us.

In conclusion, Daniel Hirst uses settings, title, and object to show living ones never could understand death. If you truly understand death, it means that you have experienced it, but if you have experienced it, it means you are no longer alive. This is the kind of logic that the artist uses to communicate that death is incomprehensible for a person who is alive. We still wonder what death is truly like. The important message that Hirst sends out is that we should not try too hard to understand it, because we simply just cannot.

-B. Lit. Group Six

#Postmodern