Boy Cutting His Toenails

Damien Hirst's 'Boy with Thorn' (1995) reworks the famous Hellenistic bronze 'Spinario' ('Boy Pulling a Thorn from His Foot') into a stainless-steel display cabinet containing a life-size anatomical mannequin in the same pose, surrounded by meticulously arranged medical instruments, vials, and supplies. The unsettling mixture of mortuary and cosmetic-industrial imagery is a signature of Hirst's 'vitrine' aesthetic, where death and antiseptic order meet. The work is held by the ARKEN Museum of Modern Art outside Copenhagen as one of the cornerstones of its Hirst holdings.

Exhibition Venue

ARKEN Museum of Modern Art

Ishøj, Denmark