All Photos By Gail

Damien Hirst’s 2005 work, Virgin (Exposed) reimagines Edgar Degas’s The Little Fourteen Year-Old Dancer as a pregnant specimen, while its title references the Virgin Mary and the Immaculate Conception.

Its garish colors recall the anatomical models and illustrations found in physicians’ offices. Partially flayed and cross-sectioned, the work also evokes historical anatomical female figures whose abdomens could be opened, often to prurient effect, to reveal reproductive organs. However, here there is no frisson of revelation and concealment, and instead the female interior is unsparingly exposed in the public space of a gallery.

Photographed in The Met Breuer (Now Closed) as Part of the 2018 Exhibit, Like Life: Sculpture, Color and The Body.