Marc Quinn (1964- ) is a contemporary artist born in London, England. He majored in art history at Cambridge University and is a member of ‘yBa (young British artists).’ While key members of yBa like Damien Hirst graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London and came into the spotlight in the ‘freeze’ exhibition in 1988, Marc Quinn’s sculpture displayed in the ‘Sensation’ exhibition led by Chalres Saatchi, a famous collector in London, in 1997 catapulted him to one of the representative artists of yBa. is a sculpture of Marc Quinn’s own head and he used 4.5 liters of his own blood as a material, which invited both public attention and controversies. This sculpture would go to decay and disappear without a special refrigerating apparatus that keeps the blood fresh. Through this work, Marc Quinn intended to talk about themes such as life, extinction, existence, and death, which are also reflected in his other works of art. For example, flowers in his work are fresh to a fault and rather look like dead flowers without vital force. Beside this piece of work, he talks about the theme of death and loss in a series of his flower drawings. An image directed and refined unnaturally out of human greed and desire is, in fact, only a ‘dead’ image of a ‘phantom’ missing substances of life.
