Reflections on the Death of a Cow (with Reference to the Work of Damien Hirst)

Figure 1

Along with sharks, skulls and flies, the artist Damien Hirst obviously has a thing for cows ...

One of the iconic works with which he made his name back in the 1990s, for example, Mother and Child (Divided), is a sculpture comprising four glass tanks supported by signature-style thick white frames, containing a cow and a calf, each cut in two and preserved in a translucent turquiose solution of formaldehyde.

Whatever one may think of the work - whatever may one think of Hirst himself - there's no denying it has a certain devastating beauty coupled with a terrible sense of sadness and loss. For not only is the calf fatally isolated from its mother, but both animals are also bisected and thus self-divided as well as separated from one another. 

Hirst seems to suggest that just as individual integrity is rendered impossible by death, so too is the hope of some kind of heavenly reunion or renconciliation between the generations. Further, Hirst wants the viewer to question why it is that corpses seem to often have a greater fascination and mystery than living beings - and even, once you overcome your initial horror, a greater beauty.

Cattle standing around in a field, he once said, lack the aesthetic interest of his cows suspended in formaldehyde. For the former are little more than soon-to-be beef burgers; dead beasts walking, chewing the cud whilst waiting for slaughter. In other words, they are organic components within an industrial food system that Heidegger describes as essentially genocidal in character and which Derrida brands as carno-phallogocentric.

The violence and injustice of our treatment of nonhuman life, particularly those animals reared on farms exclusively for food and for profit, is powerfully brought home in another of Hirst's works, The Promise of Money (2003):

Figure 2

Now, I'm not sure what Hirst is protesting with this work (if anything). But, to me, it speaks powerfully about the ongoing animal holocaust that many vegetarians, vegans, animal rights activists, and even ethically concerned carnivores are rightly sickened by. Eating well, may involve the sacrifice of animals, but it needn't involve appalling systematic cruelty, nor the symbolic cannibalistic sacrifice of other human beings (due to the voracious greed of those who thrive on such).     

I think Derrida is right to argue the crucial importance of determining a more caring and respectful (almost reverential) way of relating to the living animal in its otherness. If Hirst's sensational strategy of shock and awe can help provoke this, then that's great. Personally, however, I prefer the attempt by D. H. Lawrence to equilibrate with a black-eyed cow called Susan in all her cowy wonder:

"She knows my touch and she goes very still and peaceful, being milked. I, too, I know her smell and her warmth and her feel. And I share some of her cowy silence, when I milk her. [...] And this relation is part of the mystery of love: the individuality on each side, mine and Susan's, suspended in the relationship."

Notes

Figure 1: Damien Hirst, Mother and Child (Divided). This is a photo of the exhibition copy that Hirst created for the Turner Prize retrospective at Tate Britain in 2007. The original work (1993), is in the Astrup Fernley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. For more details, click here.

Figure 2: Damien Hirst: The Promise of Money (2003), Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates  / © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. For more details, click here.  
 
D. H. Lawrence, '...... Love Was Once a Little Boy', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 329-46.

To read more on Lawrence's relationship with Susan the cow, click here.

This post is dedicated to David Brock and Thomas Bonneville.