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Lot Essay
‘I really like making them. And I really like the machine, and I really like the movement. Every time they’re finished, I’m desperate to do another one’ — D. Hirst
With its kaleidoscopic explosion of colour, flung across the canvas in hypnotic radial bursts, beautiful, babies, optical, persons nose, trembling camera, weird shutter release, artistic eye, exploding, pig, chainsaw, sex painting (with two small pink splashes) is a mesmerising example of Damien Hirst’s spin paintings. Executed in 1996, at the peak of the artist’s early rise to critical acclaim, it takes its place within the ecstatic first wave of what has since become recognised as one of Hirst’s most iconic series of paintings. Created by pouring household emulsion paint onto a rapidly rotating canvas, the work harnesses the centrifugal dynamics of the spinning motion to spectacular optical effect. Virtuosic celebrations of colour and movement, the spin paintings are defined by their elongated, evocative titles, beginning with ‘beautiful’ and followed by a stream of nouns, verbs and adjectives whose frenetic rhythm mirrors the rapid acceleration of the spun surface. Vibrant expressions of liberation, chance and spontaneity, these paintings mark a break from the formaldehyde visions of death and decay that characterised Hirst’s earlier work, as well as eschewing the ordered formal structures of his preceding ‘spot’ paintings. At the same time, however, they are premised on the same desire to access the principles of chaos that underpin the universe. With their appearance controlled purely by the artist’s choice of colour and the movement of the spin machine, they embody Hirst’s ongoing enquiry into the external forces that determine the nature of human existence. As the artist has asserted, ‘The movement sort of implies life’ (D. Hirst, quoted in D. Hirst and G. Burn, On the Way to Work, London 2001, p. 221).
The deceptive simplicity of the spin painting method – like much of Hirst’s most sophisticated work –is grounded in a fundamental interrogation of art’s purpose. The artist has described how his spin paintings were inspired by childhood memories of watching Blue Peter presenter John Noakes demonstrate a version of the technique using a motorised cardboard spinning machine. ‘I remember thinking “that’s fun, whereas art is something more serious”’, he recalls. ‘And then as I got older, I started thinking about Van Gogh and all those painters, and cutting your ear off when you’re painting, and at that point I thought, “Why does it have to be like that?” I thought, “No, actually, the better art is the art made with the spin machine”’. Shortly after this early revelation, Hirst attended a school fête where he had the opportunity to try his hand at spin painting for the first time. ‘I queued up all day and I was making them over and over again’, he recalls (D. Hirst, quoted in https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19399198 [accessed 9 May 2015]). Ironically, it was within a similar context that Hirst would launch his own spin painting practice, manning a stall at Joshua Compston’s street fair A Fête Worse than Death. For the event, the notorious performance artist Leigh Bowery transformed Hirst and Fairhurst into clowns, and visitors were invited to create their own spin paintings, signed by the artists upon their completion. In 1994, whilst living in Berlin, Hirst had his own spin machine manufactured, and it was from this point that the series truly began to take shape. Created just two years later, the present work embodies the euphoric ecstasy of these early explorations.
As the spin paintings became increasingly popular, Hirst never lost his childlike sense of wonder in the process that had inspired him as a young boy. It remained, for him, ‘a miracle of technology’; ‘I really like making them’, he professed. ‘And I really like the machine, and I really like the movement. Every time they’re finished, I’m desperate to do another one’ (D. Hirst, quoted in D. Hirst and G. Burn, On the Way to Work, London 2001, p. 221). Ultimately, these works function as uninhibited celebrations of the power of painting: by removing his own hand directly from the process, Hirst reawakens a primal sense of awe in its unpredictable possibilities. As Mario Codognato has written, the spin paintings ‘make the colours participate in a primordial state, where order and creation dissolve and disengage from the mediation of thought and representation, to become pure expression of the basic and vital gesture of painting and its mythology’ (M. Codognato, ‘Warning Labels’, in Damien Hirst, exh. cat., Museo Archeological Nazionale, Naples, 2004, p. 42).
With its kaleidoscopic explosion of colour, flung across the canvas in hypnotic radial bursts, beautiful, babies, optical, persons nose, trembling camera, weird shutter release, artistic eye, exploding, pig, chainsaw, sex painting (with two small pink splashes) is a mesmerising example of Damien Hirst’s spin paintings. Executed in 1996, at the peak of the artist’s early rise to critical acclaim, it takes its place within the ecstatic first wave of what has since become recognised as one of Hirst’s most iconic series of paintings. Created by pouring household emulsion paint onto a rapidly rotating canvas, the work harnesses the centrifugal dynamics of the spinning motion to spectacular optical effect. Virtuosic celebrations of colour and movement, the spin paintings are defined by their elongated, evocative titles, beginning with ‘beautiful’ and followed by a stream of nouns, verbs and adjectives whose frenetic rhythm mirrors the rapid acceleration of the spun surface. Vibrant expressions of liberation, chance and spontaneity, these paintings mark a break from the formaldehyde visions of death and decay that characterised Hirst’s earlier work, as well as eschewing the ordered formal structures of his preceding ‘spot’ paintings. At the same time, however, they are premised on the same desire to access the principles of chaos that underpin the universe. With their appearance controlled purely by the artist’s choice of colour and the movement of the spin machine, they embody Hirst’s ongoing enquiry into the external forces that determine the nature of human existence. As the artist has asserted, ‘The movement sort of implies life’ (D. Hirst, quoted in D. Hirst and G. Burn, On the Way to Work, London 2001, p. 221).
The deceptive simplicity of the spin painting method – like much of Hirst’s most sophisticated work –is grounded in a fundamental interrogation of art’s purpose. The artist has described how his spin paintings were inspired by childhood memories of watching Blue Peter presenter John Noakes demonstrate a version of the technique using a motorised cardboard spinning machine. ‘I remember thinking “that’s fun, whereas art is something more serious”’, he recalls. ‘And then as I got older, I started thinking about Van Gogh and all those painters, and cutting your ear off when you’re painting, and at that point I thought, “Why does it have to be like that?” I thought, “No, actually, the better art is the art made with the spin machine”’. Shortly after this early revelation, Hirst attended a school fête where he had the opportunity to try his hand at spin painting for the first time. ‘I queued up all day and I was making them over and over again’, he recalls (D. Hirst, quoted in https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19399198 [accessed 9 May 2015]). Ironically, it was within a similar context that Hirst would launch his own spin painting practice, manning a stall at Joshua Compston’s street fair A Fête Worse than Death. For the event, the notorious performance artist Leigh Bowery transformed Hirst and Fairhurst into clowns, and visitors were invited to create their own spin paintings, signed by the artists upon their completion. In 1994, whilst living in Berlin, Hirst had his own spin machine manufactured, and it was from this point that the series truly began to take shape. Created just two years later, the present work embodies the euphoric ecstasy of these early explorations.
As the spin paintings became increasingly popular, Hirst never lost his childlike sense of wonder in the process that had inspired him as a young boy. It remained, for him, ‘a miracle of technology’; ‘I really like making them’, he professed. ‘And I really like the machine, and I really like the movement. Every time they’re finished, I’m desperate to do another one’ (D. Hirst, quoted in D. Hirst and G. Burn, On the Way to Work, London 2001, p. 221). Ultimately, these works function as uninhibited celebrations of the power of painting: by removing his own hand directly from the process, Hirst reawakens a primal sense of awe in its unpredictable possibilities. As Mario Codognato has written, the spin paintings ‘make the colours participate in a primordial state, where order and creation dissolve and disengage from the mediation of thought and representation, to become pure expression of the basic and vital gesture of painting and its mythology’ (M. Codognato, ‘Warning Labels’, in Damien Hirst, exh. cat., Museo Archeological Nazionale, Naples, 2004, p. 42).