This Artist Wants to Outsmart Death. He's Got Special Instructions

Damien Hirst surprises again – and not with a shark in formaldehyde, but with a plan for… the afterlife. The British artist wants to create for two centuries after his death. How? With 200 mysterious notebooks that are supposed to change the way we look at creativity and immortality in art.

Damien Hirst has never been one of those artists who simply paints a picture and waits for an opening. He’s more the type who throws a shark into a tank of formaldehyde and says, “Here’s your new portrait of death.” From the beginning of his career, he’s been avant-garde, unsettling, and unpredictable. And now, as he approaches sixty, he’s decided to challenge death itself.

In an interview with the British "The Times", Hirst revealed that he is working on a project that is unlike anything that has come before in the art world. His goal is to remain a creator for another 200 years... after his own death . Sounds like fantasy? Maybe. But also like something that only he could have come up with.

Damien Hirst/photo PAP Foto Avalon

Hirst’s plan is to create 200 unique notebooks . Each one is to symbolize one year after his death and contain instructions to create a work that has not yet been created. Importantly, the buyer of the notebook will not only receive the rights to realize the work – they will also be able to trade the notebook itself before the work sees the light of day.

What makes this project truly intriguing is that the instructions in the notebooks will also address the past.

- In 1991 I came up with the idea of ​​creating a pig in formalin, which I never did. So if this pig appears in notebook number 145, it will be possible to date it to 1991 - explains the artist.

In short: Damien Hirst plans to extend his artistic presence not only in time, but also in history. He wants his name to be present on the art market for the next two centuries – and for each successive generation of collectors to be able to "co-create" his legacy.

It has long been known that Hirst can stir emotions. Some consider him a visionary, others a clever manipulator who can sell anything, even a skull studded with diamonds (literally – that was his famous work "For the Love of God"). In recent years, the artist has faced accusations of inaccurate dating of his works – especially those featuring dead animals in formalin, which were supposedly created in the 1990s, although they were made decades later.

But Hirst is not going to explain himself. As he himself says, it is the conceptual moment that counts, not the physical realization. And it is this approach that becomes the axis of the new project – because if art begins with an idea, can it really last forever?

Damien Hirst is now mentioned in the same breath as Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons. Not only because of his controversial works, but above all because of his ability to read the moods of the present. Time, death, transience – these are themes that constantly return in his work. Now, however, Hirst does not only talk about death. He begins to negotiate with it.

Will his 200 notebooks really make him immortal? We don't know. But one thing is for sure: he has already made art history.