Damien Hirst & Margaret Mellis: Half Dead Flowers

This book highlights the connection between Damien Hirst (born 1965) and the British modernist artist Margaret Mellis (1914–2009), who became a close friend and mentor to the YBA protagonist during the development of his early career. In the 1980s Hirst made regular visits to Mellis' home and studio in Southwold, on the North Sea coast of England, where he spent much time studying her beautiful drawings of "half-dead flowers" on envelopes and driftwood assemblages fashioned from her beachcombing forays. In 2001 Hirst expressed the view that she had been unjustly neglected and deserved to be "up there—large on the map with her contemporaries"; their works were first exhibited side by side at the Tate in 2008. Alongside reproductions of assemblages and drawings by Mellis and Hirst, this volume includes a reproduction of a letter written to Hirst by Mellis from c. 1987, and an essay on Mellis by Hirst.