Marc Quinn Self, You, and the World

Pivotal British multidisciplinary artist Marc Quinn’s practice explores what it is to be human in the world today. This is the most comprehensive book to date on the artist’s bold and singular practice.

Marc Quinn came to the attention of the international art scene in 1991 with Self, a cast of his head realized in eight pints of his own frozen blood, exhibited in a specially designed refrigeration unit. With his materials and techniques, Quinn challenges the boundaries between art and science. Besides using ice, glass, metal, marble, and lead, he has experimented with flowers and plants frozen in silicon. Since 1999, he has been creating sculptures in classic white marble of subjects who lack one or more limbs. In addressing the purely physical aspects of life, Quinn confronts the viewer with the chasm between the physical and the mental, beauty and ugliness, the eternal and the mortal. This overview of his practice includes a timeline of all his major works.

Marc Quinn studied history of art at Cambridge before moving to London to pursue a career as an artist. In the 1980s he met Jay Jopling, the art dealer and future White Cube founder, and became the first artist Jopling worked with. His work has been acquired by leading galleries and museums around the world. Jefferson Hack is a curator, creative director, and co-founder of Dazed Media. Shirley Ngozi Nwangwa writes about art, race, gender, and politics for the New York Times, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, Art Forum, ARTnews, and other places. Hettie Judah is chief art critic on the British daily paper the i, a regular contributor to the Guardian’s arts pages, and a columnist for Apollo magazine. She writes for Frieze, Art Quarterly, Art Monthly, ArtReview, and other publications. Dr. Justin Bengry convenes the MA in Queer History at Goldsmiths University London, the first degree of its kind in the world, and is director of Goldsmiths’ Centre for Queer History.