Yes, that is a real title. “It’s a story of a ship, called the ‘Unbelievable,’ that sank 2,000 years ago,” Hirst said. “It was carrying a lot of treasures, sculptures, jewels and things like that, to create a palace. And it sank and was lost forever.” Though this prehistoric Titanic is pure fiction, Hirst will treat it as reality. He plans to stage the discovery of the ship, send divers to recover its many treasures, photograph the process and then make paintings based on the photographs. Sculptures will be based on famous works from art history, including Michelangelo’s “Rebellious Slave” at the Louvre in Paris.
For Hirst, the Era of Formaldehyde (two decades, to be precise, starting with the Charles Saatchi-commissioned shark in 1991) is declared dead in the water, according to a Bloomberg interview with the artist on the eve of his latest Gagosian exhibition. That show, aptly titled End of Era, includes a pickled bull’s head with gilded horns and blinged-out wunderkabinet filled with 27,888 manufactured diamonds (shown below), which he said would be "great in a museum or Jay-Z's house" ... gotta love it.
