Marc Quinn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Marc Quinn (born 1964) is a British artist, best known for Alison Lapper
Pregnant, a statue of Alison Lapper currently installed on the fourth
plinth at Trafalgar Square, self, a sculpture of his head made with his
own frozen blood, and "Garden" (2000). He is one of the Young British
Artists (YBAs).
Quinn was born in
London. He studied history and the history of art at Robinson College,
Cambridge. He worked as an assistant to the sculptor Barry Flanagan.
He was not
represented in the 1988 Damien Hirst-curated Freeze exhibition which
brought the YBAs together for the first time (although he did at one
time share a flat with Hirst). Quinn emerged in the early 1990s. He was
the first artist represented by Jay Jopling, and was exhibited in
Charles Saatchi's defining Sensation. Quinn's signature
piece in the art world is Self (1991), a frozen sculpture of the
artist's head made from 4.5 litres (9.5 US pints) of his own blood,
taken from his body over a period of 5 months. Self, like many
other pieces by the YBAs, was bought by Charles Saatchi (in 1991 for a
reputed £13,000). The press reported in 2002 that the sculpture had been
destroyed by builders employed to expand the kitchen for Saatchi's
partner, the celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, when they unplugged the
freezer in which it was being stored (it has to be kept at -12C/10F).
This would seem to have been unfounded, however, as the piece was
exhibited intact by Saatchi when he opened his new gallery in London in
2003. In April, 2005, Self was sold to a US collector for £1.5m.His next important
piece in terms of public profile was the frozen garden he made for
Miuccia Prada in the year 2000. A whole garden full of plants which
could never grow together kept in cryogenic suspension, "Garden" seems
to anticipate many of the environmental themes which have become so
important in the last few years. Quinn has also made
a series of marble sculptures of people either born with limbs missing
or who have had them amputated. This culminated in the 15 ton marble
statue of Alison Lapper, a woman who was born with no arms and severely
shortened legs, which sits on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in
London. His portrait of John
Sulston, who won the Nobel prize for sequencing the human genome on the
Human Genome Project, is in the National Portrait Gallery. It consists
of bacteria containing Sulston's DNA in agar jelly. Since 2005 Quinn has
become known to the general public for his sculpture of Alison Lapper,
which is on prominent display on a plinth in Trafalgar Square in front
of the National Gallery.
In April 2006,
Sphinx, a sculpture of Kate Moss by Quinn was revealed. The sculpture
shows Moss in a yoga position with her ankles and arms wrapped behind
her ears. This body of work culminated in an exhibition at the Mary
Boone Gallery in New York in May 2007.
