Damien Hirst
September 2004
Damien Hirst's bad-boy/enfant-terrible status is forever lodged in the public consciousness. His infamous shark in a tank of formaldehyde, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) and A Thousand Years (1990), in which unfortunate maggots turn into flies and are lured towards a decaying cow's head, only to be electrocuted by an 'insect-o-cutor', instantly courted publicity and press attention.
In 1988, in his second year at Goldsmiths' College, Hirst organised the seminal Freeze exhibition in a disused Port of London Authority building in Plough Way SE16, near the Thames. Fellow Goldsmiths' students such as Angus Fairhurst, Sarah Lucas and Gary Hume were invited to participate.
Despite Hirst's notoriety, his cabinet pieces filled with surgical tools and pill boxes and his 'spin' and 'spot' paintings are less familiar to the general public.
The 'spot' paintings developed out of a collage work from the eighties. When his tutor, Michael Craig-Martin, suggested that the artist place the actual object of the collage on to the wall, Hirst was struck by the 'simple use of colour, ordered geometric shapes - that's where the spot paintings came from'. (1)
Hirst approached his 'spot' paintings by arranging equally sized spots of colour in a grid formation like a paint chart. The colours were chosen 'intuitively - or, rather, by process of decision-making based on aesthetic and non-rational demands'. (2)
The artist produced an endless series of 'spot' paintings changing only in size and variation. The spots themselves may be made out of paper, on the wall or on canvas. The titles were out of a pharmaceutical company products catalogue, Sigma Chemical Company's Biochemicals for Research and Diagnostic Reagents. The Paintings were titled after the drugs listed, working alphabetically through the book, using every name in order. Hirst describes them as:
1. Damien Hirst, I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, one to one, always, forever, now (London, 1997), p. 69
2. Op. Cit., p. 68
3. Op. Cit., p. 246
4. Op. Cit., p. 246
In 1988, in his second year at Goldsmiths' College, Hirst organised the seminal Freeze exhibition in a disused Port of London Authority building in Plough Way SE16, near the Thames. Fellow Goldsmiths' students such as Angus Fairhurst, Sarah Lucas and Gary Hume were invited to participate.
Despite Hirst's notoriety, his cabinet pieces filled with surgical tools and pill boxes and his 'spin' and 'spot' paintings are less familiar to the general public.
The 'spot' paintings developed out of a collage work from the eighties. When his tutor, Michael Craig-Martin, suggested that the artist place the actual object of the collage on to the wall, Hirst was struck by the 'simple use of colour, ordered geometric shapes - that's where the spot paintings came from'. (1)
Hirst approached his 'spot' paintings by arranging equally sized spots of colour in a grid formation like a paint chart. The colours were chosen 'intuitively - or, rather, by process of decision-making based on aesthetic and non-rational demands'. (2)
The artist produced an endless series of 'spot' paintings changing only in size and variation. The spots themselves may be made out of paper, on the wall or on canvas. The titles were out of a pharmaceutical company products catalogue, Sigma Chemical Company's Biochemicals for Research and Diagnostic Reagents. The Paintings were titled after the drugs listed, working alphabetically through the book, using every name in order. Hirst describes them as:
An endless series like a sculptural idea of a painter (myself). A scientific approach to painting, in a similar way to drugs companies' scientific approach to life... In spot paintings the grid-like structure creates the beginning of the system. On each painting no two colours are the same. (3)
The question could be asked whether Pharmaceutical Wall Painting, Five Blacks, indeed qualifies as a print? It comes with installation instructions from the artist and tools provided - 150 tins of enamel paint, each with a different colour with the exception of 5 tins of black. It is also 'published' in an edition. Hirst adds unhelpfully, 'So, I am a sculptor who wants to be a painter who thinks a painting is now reduced to a logo? And how do installations fit into all this? That's not my problem.' (4)1. Damien Hirst, I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, one to one, always, forever, now (London, 1997), p. 69
2. Op. Cit., p. 68
3. Op. Cit., p. 246
4. Op. Cit., p. 246
Jennifer Ramkalawon