The Giant Ashtray by Damien Hirst probably intended to raise some awarness about smoking and the dangers it poses by creating a giant ashtray and with real cigarett buts and packs. This work does not demonstrate much skill of the artist because it the ashtray is very simple in design and it filled with lots of cigarette butts that anyone could fill.
This work is an imitation of common ashtrays, but in a smaller scale. It communicates the dangers of smoking by bringing up the scale of the ashtray, it is easier to conceptualize how much danger a person puts itself by smoking too many cigaretts. It attempts to educate people by showing them very simply, how disgusting it is to smoke, and how many cigarets you actually smoke if you were not to trash them imidiately.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/galleries/controversial_art_in_new_york/controversial_art_in_new_york.html