In 2007 Hirst was invited by the landmark New York skyscraper Lever House, to create a site specific installation for the building’s lobby. ‘School : The Archaeology of Lost Desires, Comprehending Infinity and the Search for Knowledge’ is described by the artist as: “his flock. An installation without any walls, only glass.” The piece included three rows of equally spaced tanks of formaldehyde-preserved, flayed sheep carcasses acting as pupils.[1] The tanks were laid out on autopsy tables, and the bodies – severed from the heads – are fed through intravenous tubes. At the rear of the classroom was a shark in a tank on which was placed a tree branch. Beneath the autopsy table carrying the shark’s tanks was an overflowing ashtray. Hirst made the installation’s focal vitrine work after Francis Bacon’s ‘Painting’ (1946). Explaining: “when [a work] becomes three-dimensional it turns into something else. And [Bacon’s paintings] work incredibly well, three-dimensionally.”[2] Bacon’s technique of boxing in his figures within three-dimensional ‘spaceframes’ also relates to Hirst’s use of “spatially containing” his sculptures in vitrines and tanks.[3]

The complex installation also included: two live birds in a cage; a scribbled on blackboard; a series of ‘Medicine Cabinets’ and backwards-running clocks. It was accompanied by a soundtrack written by Antony Genn and Martin Slattery.