Damien Hirst’s sausage covered Christmas tree
If you’re an upmarket, five-star hotel in Mayfair wanting to add a bit of much-needed edge to your establishment, take a leaf out of the Connaught Hotel’s book this festive season. Since 2015, they’ve been inviting artists to decorate a 30-foot Christmas tree, and resident shark suspender Damien Hirst was charged with setting the tone on their inaugural tree. His approach to baubles was as conceptual as you might expect, featuring garlands of sausages, syringes and snowmen-shaped pills. Or, as the hotel elegantly put it, “festively reimagined medical instruments”.
Hirst seemed an odd choice off the bat, given his former reputation as the enfant terrible of British art. He’s set sharks in formaldehyde and covered a human skull with 8,601 diamonds, both of which aren’t all that Christmassy, but he’s always been partial to making art in public spaces, so maybe a Christmas tree was the perfect canvas.
Hirst himself described the Christmas tree as a “celebration of togetherness”. Under that guise, the sausages and pills can be generously interpreted as a celebration of Christmas excess. But that in itself caused controversy, given the tree’s proximity to the Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception – a shelter for the homeless which offers support to those struggling with drug addiction. One medicine bottle fashioned into a decoration read: “Dingdong merrily on high”.
It was also reported that its installation disturbed the Jesuit fathers at night. The well-to-do Mayfair residents had their own issues, with the Daily Mail gleefully getting comments on them. Unconcerned with the offence caused by the drug references, one said: “The noise and disruption to sleep was unacceptable. Farm Street church’s traditional Christmas painting on the church wall will be obscured,” and was also troubled by the “sexual connotations” of the sausages.
In turn, the hotel mused that Hirst had drawn inspiration from “the sense of hope derived from the power of science and medicine”. Not all of its 300-odd decorations were odd, and he did decide to cover it with some traditional white doves: “A symbol of hope, beauty and fragility.” The controversy likely had the desired effect for Hirst, but it’s notable that the hotel opted for a more subdued decoration the year after, courtesy of Sir Antony Gormley, who simply lit up its trunk.
After a year away from controversial artists, it was Tracey Emin, Hirst’s Young British Artist peer, who designed the next one, covering it in neon poetry in a tribute to her late mother. The idea that two of the most prolific artists to emerge from the British art scene in the 1980s, once famous for their shock tactics, were designing a tree for an extortionately priced London hotel is genuinely heartwarming. Christmas can bring the most unlikely of people together.
