Albert Camus and Damien Hirst: Always looking on the absurd side of life

Abstract

The aim of this text is to consider the notions of life and art, revealed in Camus’s texts, mainly The Myth of Sisyphus (published in French in 1942) and The Rebel (1951), and extrapolate them to the present state of contemporary art by analysing a few artworks by Damien Hirst, the richest living artist, a modern Sisyphus in the self-awareness he manifests towards the incongruity of his work. Always looking on the absurd side of life dwells on the inevitability of life and art, accepting the fact, according to Camus’s words, that: the impossible remains impossible. Instead of denying the meaningless and finding some form of redemption, both French writer and British artist have embraced this potential and have used the absurd as a form of conveying meaning to their art. Hirst’s artworks that will be referred in this text include the series: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991); Mother and Child Divided (1993); For the Love of God (2007) and For Heaven’s Sake (2008).