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Lot Essay
Stretching over two metres in height, Cardura Doxazosin (1992) is a hypnotic early example of Damien Hirst’s spot paintings from the group of ‘Deuterated Compounds’: a rare subseries distinguished by their greyscale palette. Other than a single work from the pastel-coloured ‘Venoms’ made in 1989, the ‘Deuterated Compounds’ were the first subgroup aside from the ‘Pharmaceuticals’—which form by far the largest category of spot paintings—to be created. Hirst made four of these grisaille works in 1992, and just twenty-two in total. They follow the same set of rules that applies to almost all of his spot paintings: no spot is precisely the same shade as any other within the work; the spots are hand-painted in household gloss on canvas; and the gap between each spot is equal to the width of the spots themselves. In subtle shades of platinum, ash, graphite and gunmetal, Cardura Doxazosin’s 110 spots create a dynamic optical spectacle. They pulse and oscillate as the eye attempts to grasp a pattern from the grid, or hones in on one spot’s particular hue.
Hirst’s spot paintings are some of the most recognisable works in modern art. Alongside his sculptures and installations, they helped to define the era of the Young British Artists, sparking controversy and acclaim in equal measure. Cardura Doxazosin was painted at a pivotal moment. In March 1992, the first of Charles Saatchi’s ‘Young British Artists’ group shows opened at his Boundary Road gallery, where Hirst exhibited his now legendary works A Thousand Years (1990) and The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991): the acronym ‘YBA’ would soon enter the curatorial lexicon. In November, Hirst was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. At the end of the year, he debuted his room-sized Pharmacy (1992)—today in the collection of Tate, London—at New York’s Cohen Gallery. Like his earlier medicine cabinets and later mirror-backed pill cabinets, the installation’s rows of packaged drugs related closely to the spot paintings’ formal purism and therapeutic themes. ‘Art is like medicine—it can heal,’ Hirst has said. ‘Yet I’ve always been amazed at how many people believe in medicine but don’t believe in art, without questioning either’ (D. Hirst, ‘On Dumb Painting’, in D. Hirst and R. Violette (eds.), I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now, London 1997, p. 246).
Since their inception in 1986, Hirst’s spots have appeared in sizes from half a millimetre to 36 inches across, and on canvases from mural-scale to miniature. Grouped according to distinct types of drugs—each work’s title is taken from the 1990 Sigma-Aldrich Catalogue of Chemical Compounds—other subseries of spot paintings include ‘Radioactive Compounds’ (fluorescent spots), ‘Lipids’ (single-coloured spots) and ‘Sedatives’ (white spots on white canvases with gold edges). Among all these variants, the greyscale ‘Deuterated Compounds’ are perhaps the most coolly distilled, finding echoes in Gerhard Richter’s austere grey paintings and the monochrome works of Bridget Riley.
Furthering the production-line Pop ideas of Andy Warhol, Hirst’s work seems especially prescient today, when humanity’s relationship to medicine, biotechnology and artificial intelligence is becoming ever more nebulous and complex. Reminding us that we are far from masters of our fate, the spot paintings embody a scientific urge to categorise, describe and control that is undermined by the endless, disorienting multiplicity of their spots.
Hirst’s spot paintings are some of the most recognisable works in modern art. Alongside his sculptures and installations, they helped to define the era of the Young British Artists, sparking controversy and acclaim in equal measure. Cardura Doxazosin was painted at a pivotal moment. In March 1992, the first of Charles Saatchi’s ‘Young British Artists’ group shows opened at his Boundary Road gallery, where Hirst exhibited his now legendary works A Thousand Years (1990) and The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991): the acronym ‘YBA’ would soon enter the curatorial lexicon. In November, Hirst was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. At the end of the year, he debuted his room-sized Pharmacy (1992)—today in the collection of Tate, London—at New York’s Cohen Gallery. Like his earlier medicine cabinets and later mirror-backed pill cabinets, the installation’s rows of packaged drugs related closely to the spot paintings’ formal purism and therapeutic themes. ‘Art is like medicine—it can heal,’ Hirst has said. ‘Yet I’ve always been amazed at how many people believe in medicine but don’t believe in art, without questioning either’ (D. Hirst, ‘On Dumb Painting’, in D. Hirst and R. Violette (eds.), I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now, London 1997, p. 246).
Since their inception in 1986, Hirst’s spots have appeared in sizes from half a millimetre to 36 inches across, and on canvases from mural-scale to miniature. Grouped according to distinct types of drugs—each work’s title is taken from the 1990 Sigma-Aldrich Catalogue of Chemical Compounds—other subseries of spot paintings include ‘Radioactive Compounds’ (fluorescent spots), ‘Lipids’ (single-coloured spots) and ‘Sedatives’ (white spots on white canvases with gold edges). Among all these variants, the greyscale ‘Deuterated Compounds’ are perhaps the most coolly distilled, finding echoes in Gerhard Richter’s austere grey paintings and the monochrome works of Bridget Riley.
Furthering the production-line Pop ideas of Andy Warhol, Hirst’s work seems especially prescient today, when humanity’s relationship to medicine, biotechnology and artificial intelligence is becoming ever more nebulous and complex. Reminding us that we are far from masters of our fate, the spot paintings embody a scientific urge to categorise, describe and control that is undermined by the endless, disorienting multiplicity of their spots.