The Path LESS TAKEN
MARC QUINN’S art may come across as a shock to most, but the artist insists he is only asking the most basic life questions through his creations, albeit in the most UNCONVENTIONAL ways By Ankit Gupta
f one were to go by appearances alone, then there’d be nothing ‘artistic’ about Marc Quinn. He is impeccably dressed and doesn’t have a full head of grey hair. He doesn’t speak typical intellectual jargon either. On the contrary, Quinn is bald, courteous, softspoken, and most of all, a little taken aback by the intense amount of interest in his art in the country, “I’ve been to India many times, but this is the first time I am here on work. But yes, I am surprised at the interest in my work, and of course I am happy!” he gushes.
The fact that his work should stir curiosity is not surprising—most of it comes across as quite a shock to most people. Every five years since 1991 Quinn has been making Self, a frozen head sculpture that is cast from his own blood. Each piece takes nine or ten pints of blood to make, and he has to wait almost six weeks in between to
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Iharvest fresh blood. And yet Quinn does not think of himself as a shock artist, “Yes, I do elicit those responses from viewers but I just think that if by using a certain kind of material you can have a direct response from the viewer, it’s perfect. Because that is what you as an artist are looking for,” he explains. “Besides I don’t use any particular material just for its shock value, but in order to communicate something deeper, a more direct idea.” There have however been times that this ‘communication’ has reached another level. “There were some Japanese tourists at one of my art exhibits, and some of them just fainted after seeing this sculpture ( Self ),” he remembers with a chuckle.
It is this very sculpture that gave birth to the infamous Charles Saatchi myth. Saatchi bought Quinn’s first sculpture in 1991 for a handsome
sum of £13,000. Then came the rumours that the sculpture had melted; yet Saatchi displayed it in his gallery in 2003. “Well, I can’t tell you if it’s true or not,” Marc laughs. “What happened was that Charles had a few workers at his house ( i t was being g remodelled) and one of them m thought that the artwork had d melted; the next day there was s a small report in one of the he e tabloids about it. Soon the whole world was asking us if it had actually melted.” Egg him further and Marc finally relents, “Well we just decided to keep quiet about it and both Charles and I kept on saying, ‘No Comments’. The piece was already getting us just the kind of response that we had wanted,” he smiles.
Marc’s conversations with h the fragility of l i fe i s a continuous dialogue; one that at has also been the central force in n his body of work. Ask him how w this seemingly disconnected ed world of art and science came me together in his consciousness, ss, and he replies quite simply. “Well, Well, my father was a scientist and my mother an artist, so in many ways you can perhaps say that I am a combination of them both!” On a more serious note, he politely explains that almost everything in the world is a product of science, down to the first DNA, and therefore art is a mere reflection of the world around us. “As an artist what I am most interested in is the great paradox of life. What creates us, sustains us, and keeps us alive is also the same thing which is extremely fragile. Also, both art and science ask the same questions about our existence, about who we are, and where we come from. It’s just that science has a definitive answer to these questions, and art just poses the same questions in a different manner.”
A case in point is perhaps the portrait of Nobel Prize winner John E Sulston who worked on the Human Genome Project. Quinn’s portrait of Sulston is made of bacteria containing Sulston’s DNA, in a jar of jelly. The portrait is also the first abstract work to be displayed at the National Portrait Gallery in London. “This work of mine is perhaps the most realistic portrait which is on
“Both ART and SCIENCE ask the
same questions about our EXISTENCE, about who we are.
It’s just that science has a DEFINITIVE ANSWER and art just poses the same questions in a
different manner.”
display in that gallery, quite simply because it contains the instructions to remake John E Sulston,” he explains.
At 48, Marc Quinn is one of Britain’s most successful artists. Like his contemporaries Damien Hirst and Anish Kapoor, his story too is one of rags to riches. An alcoholic who went into rehab in 1993, it was with the assistance of eminent gallerist Jay Jopling of White Cube gallery that Quinn was introduced to the upper echelons of the art world. In 2005, Quinn’s first
Self sold for an estimated £1.5 million and the 2006 version was bought by the National Gallery for £300,000.
Quinn has come a long way since. He now uses luxurious materials such as gold and marble (from the same quarry that Michelangelo accessed) to make his art. His Siren, a life-size sculpture of supermodel Kate Moss in 18ct gold is often cited as one of the most s t unning works of contemporary art. Ask him why Kate, and he cites her inner beauty and superbly toned physique as the chief reasons: “Kate is one of the most amazing women in the world. Certainly one of the most beautiful. But it’s not just her physical beauty; she is also a great human being.” But why put her in a twisted form in that case? Why not show her in a more aesthetic yoga posture? “Ah, well, that is the paradox! She is contorted; but yet look at her face—it’s an oasis of serenity; it’s about calm and peace in the middle of strife,” he explains.
Another one of Marc’s exceptional pieces of work is the frozen garden he made for Miuccia Prada, installed at Fondazione Prada in Milan, Italy. A whole garden of plants which could never grow together, except in cryogenic suspension. “It is a beautiful piece of work, almost like the garden of Eden; made up of plants which could not ordinarily co-exist,” he says. “I went to the flower markets in Italy with an encyclopaedia and just kept ticking in the book those plants I wanted. I froze them in silicone so no air could get into the plants, and there it was—a veritable frozen garden!” He makes it sound like a piece of cake, perhaps because of his love for freezing things. “I think art is about making an idea immortal, asking a question which would linger on forever.”
Quinn’s first solo exhibition in India is scheduled for next year, in collaboration with the Indian British Council. And looking at his extraordinary body of work and his love for the seemingly inordinate, it’s going to be a show worth waiting for.