Hobgoblins

In 2016 a minor controversy hit the art world. Academic chemists had claimed that high levels of formaldehyde gas had leaked into the galleries during the artist’s 2012 retrospective at Tate Modern. Works from Damien Hirst’s Natural History series – animals preserved in formaldehyde solution and encased in glass and steel boxes – were not safely sealed.

Despite the sensational headlines, closer inspection revealed that the paper was based on inaccurate data. The author and journal retracted the piece and admitted that Tate’s visitors were in no danger. Away from the Flock 1994 was as innocent as a lamb.

Formaldehyde smells strong. Pungent, sharp and burning, it conjures a discomforting mix of pickles and disinfectants. In a book published in 2004, Fergus Greer recalled his experience photographing Hirst, with the latter lying naked atop a tank full of his less-than-fragrant cow heads. Greer was ‘ill for two days afterwards. The smell of formaldehyde – toxic, nauseating, poisonous’.

Hirst’s pickled creations have always been haunted by an assumption that they must give off an unpleasant odour. When two of them sold for half their estimated prices at Christie’s in 1999, a reporter for The Economist mused that worries about their aroma must have put off prospective collectors.

The threat of disagreeable smells hasn’t stopped collectors from purchasing Hirst’s other odorous works: they’ve simply toned down the stench. When A Thousand Years 1990 was first shown at the artist’s Gambler show held in a disused biscuit factory in Bermondsey, the stink from the rotting cow’s head, placed under an electric fly trap, drove audiences from the room. Charles Saatchi installed the work in his gallery in 1992, but the smell was reduced by replacing the rotting cow’s head with a replica smeared with blood, dog food and ketchup.

Yet, in contrast to the smell of decomposing bovine bonce, most of the works in the Natural History series do not emit a noticeable scent. If the researchers had trusted their noses rather than their electronic sensors, it would have been clear that their results were inaccurate: the chemists had claimed that the fumes around the artworks reached 5.0 parts per million (ppm), but further measurements put the concentration at less than 0.1 ppm. The threshold at which we can smell formaldehyde in the air is around 0.5 to 1.0 ppm. That suspicious noses could not detect formaldehyde should have been an indication that the measurements smelt fishy.

Hirst’s works were not the first to elicit concerns about the pungent smells associated with preservation. When the British Museum opened its doors in 1759, one of the collections it inherited from Sir Hans Sloane was a massive assortment of specimens preserved in alcohol. In 1809, Sir Joseph Banks, a trustee of the museum, called for the removal of the jars and their floating contents because they made the galleries ‘smell strongly of spirits’, and visitors had given them the ‘opprobrious appellation of hobgoblins’. Folkloric characters that reeked of booze did not fit with the institution’s Enlightenment ideals.

The fuss about the chemical cocktail contained in Hirst’s tanks demonstrates the impossibility of ever fully disguising the scent of decay. Whether alcohol or formaldehyde, the materials we use to diminish the reek of decomposition end up only reminding us of its existence. Even if we cannot smell the formaldehyde in the air, just knowing it is there instils in us the uneasy feeling of breathing in the aroma of death.

^{Away from the Flock is included in the free collection display End of a Century: 1990–2000.}

^{William Tullett is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of York. His book Sniff: A History of Smells is published by Yale University Press.}

^{ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008.}