{"id":146620,"date":"2025-09-19T03:15:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T03:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/146620\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T03:15:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T03:15:10","slug":"art-doesnt-have-to-shock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/146620\/","title":{"rendered":"Art doesn’t have to shock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marc Quinn is often hailed an artist activist, a trailblazer who uses his medium to spark social change. One of British art\u2019s headlining acts, he\u2019s created radical sculptures that have addressed the pandemic, the refugee crisis, racism and disability, but he doesn\u2019t see his work as being a vehicle for the world\u2019s biggest issues. Rather than focusing on the subjects that divide us or making a pointed opinion, he\u2019s more interested in our common dominators. In a world full of hot takes and opinion pieces, he is that most important of vehicles, “a chronicler”.<\/p>\n

\u201cArt is about being a person in the world and how that’s a shared experience we all have,\u201d he says. \u201cSometimes I find, for some reason or another, that I want to make art about things that are part of the political spectrum, but it isn\u2019t an intention. Everything I do is about existing in this world, it\u2019s not pushing an agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"marc <\/p>\n

While Quinn balks at the idea that his work is political, it is undeniably bold. In 1991, aged 27, he published Self, a frozen cast of his head made using 10 pints of his blood, extracted over the course of a year. The idea was to present a cumulative index of passing time and an ongoing self-portrait of his ageing and changing self. \u201cBlood is like a liquid life,\u201d he says. \u201cI wanted to make a self-portrait that was more real. So many self-portraits are made of marble or bronze, which is annoying to me because there\u2019s a whole element missing. You\u2019ve got the appearance of someone, but you haven’t got any materiality that’s linked to being human at all. I just couldn’t think of what you could do, because obviously you can’t just lop off your arm or something. I mean, you could, but it would be a one-time thing…\u201d<\/p>\n

What to Read Next”Everything I do is about existing in this world, it\u2019s not pushing an agenda”<\/p>\n

The rest of the story is art legend. Quinn famously found a doctor who agreed to extract enough blood over five separate sessions. Next, he cast his head in plaster which was then filled with blood. The cast was frozen and placed in subzero silicone oil inside a Perspex box. Quinn makes a new version every five years, each time undergoing the same committed process. So far, seven exist, and he\u2019s working on an exhibition showcasing them all together. “What’s interesting now, because of the development of bioscience and our ability to read DNA, is that they document my history and that of every relative of mine from the beginning of time,\u201d he says. \u201cIt’s the ultimate biological biography.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"artistADRIAN DENNIS\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Self by Marc Quinn in 2009<\/p>\n

Self turned Quinn into an art sensation, and he became one of the original Young British Artists, a group that emerged in London in the 1980s including Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst. He describes how multiple factors \u2013 the combination of artists and Charles Saatchi\u2019s famed 1992 show from which the YBA term dates \u2013 created a perfect storm. \u201cIt was a great moment for British art,\u201d he says. \u201cPlus, there was a recession, so people wanted to buy art that was \u00a33,000 and not \u00a3300,000. People wanted art that was connected to the real world, which is what probably connects most of the YBAs. I think that\u2019s what people still want. Before then, art was abstract and elitist.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"alisonDan Regan\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Alison Lapper Pregnant in 2005 on Trafalgar Square\u2019s Fourth Plinth<\/p>\n

Art as a way of reflecting the world we live in is the through line of Quinn\u2019s work. Garden, a full botanical garden frozen and displayed at the Fondazione Prada, is in part about man\u2019s manipulation of nature. Our Blood, an ambitious public artwork comprising two enormous, identical cubes of frozen human blood, made from donations by 5,000+ resettled refugee volunteers and 5,000+ non-refugee volunteers, speaks to that which binds us. Alison Lapper Pregnant, a marble sculpture of the pregnant disabled artist that was installed on Trafalgar Square\u2019s Fourth Plinth, is a meditation on who society chooses to celebrate. A Surge of Power in 2020, a sculpture of a Black Lives Matter protester temporarily placed on top of Edward Colston\u2019s empty plinth in Bristol, is a statement about racial injustice and inequity. He doesn\u2019t ever run out of ideas, although admits some get left by the wayside (\u201cThere\u2019s no point in flogging a dead horse.\u201d). Quinn\u2019s art is also very commercially successful; high-profile collectors of his work include Miuccia Prada and Tom Ford. In 2015, his bronze statue of Kate Moss in a yoga pose reached $1.3 million including fees at auction. Part of his appeal is his ability to shock and challenge, but also his original way of interpreting what he sees around him.<\/p>\n

\"statuephiliaPeter Macdiarmid\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Quinn with his Kate Moss sculpture Sphinx in 2008<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think all art has to shock,\u201d he says. \u201cThings can be beautiful as well. The world changes. Sometimes culture brings forth shocking things, and sometimes it brings forth beautiful things, and often it’s in a reverse reflection of what’s happening in the world. When there’s nothing happening, people crave something to disrupt their lives, and then when there\u2019s too much horror, people want something to calm them.\u201d<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s the artist\u2019s job to react in the moment”\"marcSimon Tupper<\/p>\n

Quinn at Annabel\u2019s with his Light into Life sculpture<\/p>\n

We talk about the pandemic and how only recently, five years on from the first lockdown, it has started entering dinner conversations again. \u201cI did some paintings about it, screens that were shown at Venice Biennale in 2021, but for most people it was much too early. They couldn\u2019t look at them at all, and I understand \u2013 it was a huge, worldwide, traumatic experience, but it\u2019s the artist\u2019s job to react in the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nature has been an ongoing theme in Quinn\u2019s work, prompting a collaboration with Kew Gardens last year, Light Into Life \u2013 20 new pieces that explore humanity\u2019s relationship with the natural world. One of the huge mirrored sculptures \u2013 a towering orchid \u2013 now stands in the entrance of the private members club Annabel\u2019s as part of its month-long Amazon campaign, which aims to raise funds for The Caring Family Foundation\u2019s reforestation and restoration efforts. \u201cIt becomes the environment that it’s in, because it reflects it entirely,\u201d says Quinn. \u201cThese sculptures dissolve into the setting, but you see yourself in it too and it makes you realise that you’re also part of the environment. There’s a more profound connection to understanding something if you experience it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"marcMilo Brown<\/p>\n

Quinn\u2019s Light into Life sculpture in Annabel\u2019s <\/p>\n

The project appealed to the academic, studious aspect of his personality, the part that studied History of Art at Cambridge. For Kew, he read numerous nature books and spoke to dozens of horticulturists. Some of the final sculptures were based on pressed plants he\u2019d found in the Kew archives. \u201cPart of getting into a subject is reading a lot around it, doing research and getting deeply into a topic,\u201d he says. \u201cI just love that aspect of the process, which the artworks pop out of.\u201d<\/p>\n

“I do a lot of stuff in the public realm because I like to connect with real people”<\/p>\n

Quinn\u2019s work might be displayed in some of the world\u2019s leading galleries, but he is passionate about the importance of public art in making his industry more inclusive and less elitist. “I do a lot of stuff in the public realm because I like to connect with real people, which I define as those not in the art world,\u201d he explains. \u201cNon-art world views of art are underestimated; people think they don’t understand things, but actually, everyone understands things. They just aren’t asked about it. Maybe they don\u2019t go to galleries, but a public artwork forces you to engage with a subject. Look at Alison Lapper. Trafalgar Square is full of statues of dead white guys who conquered the world, and then, in the middle of it, you had this amazing living, pregnant woman who looks very different to the people we choose to immortalise and celebrate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"statueMatthew Horwood\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Temporary installation A Surge of Power (Jen Reid) 2020 in Bristol<\/p>\n

He says the invention of the internet and social media has helped create more opportunities for aspiring artists. The globalisation of art means that creatives are better connected than he was when he first began his career in the ’90s. \u201cThere\u2019s good and bad to everything, but for it to be more international is good,\u201d he says. \u201cMost of the things I do are abroad, and most of the collectors are abroad. We can do that much more now because we\u2019re connected online. We can communicate through social media and websites, and see shows happening all over the world. It\u2019s possible to discover artists from different places really quickly. Everything’s sped up.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s another area to discuss and explore in your work, I suggest. \u201cYeah, it\u2019s very interesting to be able to make art about a disembodied online world that mirrors the embodied world. It\u2019s completely new.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forward-facing and full of ideas, Marc Quinn is off again.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Annabel\u2019s for the Amazon\u2019 campaign launched this September in partnership with The Caring Family Foundation and is a month-long initiative dedicated to raising vital funds to support the foundation\u2019s reforestation and restoration efforts in the Brazilian Amazon, empower Indigenous communities, and to continue its work with women and children in both Brazil and the UK.<\/p>\n

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