Growing up in a big city like London generally means that picking up fresh produce, no matter how much you pay, is never going to be the same as picking it straight off the tree or whatever it grows on. To substitute this freshness gap I have always taken some cocktail of vitamin supplements. Though by no means as extreme as Americans when it comes to this, I always felt it essential to boost my diet with what it might be lacking. I took this for granted until one night I stood staring at my sprawling vitamin collection, that has its own section in my kitchen resembling a small organic pharmacy.
I realised how stressed I was about missing my supplement boost. Not physically but mentally stressed at the thought of missing some Vitamin C and catching flu or something. When you travel as much as I do, being exposed to new foreign bacteria is a perpetual concern. I realised I had virtually identical collections at every home I have around the world. I even travel with a basic stash just in case. Obviously vitamins are hardly prescription medication. When was the last time we heard about someone falling ill to multi-vitamin abuse? Likely hood is that we are all deficient in enough vitamins anyway. Except Madonna maybe.
However, many do take serious prescription medication (not mentioning illegal medication) out of habit, dedication, hope, and addiction. A fact so clearly addressed by many artists as I was reminded by in the infamous Hirst piece Lullaby Spring. 6,136 individually hand-crafted and painted pills, representing society's dependence on pharmaceuticals great and small.
In a world where we so readily question everything from contemporary art to politics to our friends, it is intriguing that few stop to question the doctors and medical professionals that surround us. Pushing prescriptions upon us that quite often, are not totally necessary. It is not as easy to see the huge pharmaceutical corporations hiding behind the doctors they are intrinsically connected with, as it is to see ones reflection in the highly polished steel cases that house Hirst's phony-pills.
Though Hirst is more often accused of selling-out than of being a true artist these days, what most fail to re-collect is that artists are and have always been mirrors for society. When everything has 'sold-out', so have the artists, because it is how they can connect with their audience on a wider platform. It may be time that society stopped pointing fingers and admitted what Lily Allen puts so succinctly "Why can't we all, all just be honest, admit to ourselves that everyone's on it?".
At a more intimate and affordable level, Hirst has been cultivating his own product range under the Other Criteria brand for some time. Amongst the skull t-shirts and butterfly wall-paper, are gems like his pill cuff links and bracelets in silver and gold. A piece of art to wear, a silent and ever present reminder of the beauty and the burden of modern medicine.
"Jetset Violet"
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