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Lot Essay
Executed in 2003, Day by Day is a glistening glassed cabinet, adorned with dozens of brightly coloured pills aligned along perfect minimalist shelving. In its display of real medication, each work from the Day by Day series is totally unique and has an infinite number of possibilities of organization, all in relation to the desires of its owner. The work is an altar to modern medicine, parodying and exposing our overreliance and excessive faith in this new religion, revealing the absurdity that we are happy to take these pills on a daily basis, despite knowing nothing of the contents.
In Day by Day Hirst illuminates the shocking blind faith which society endows upon modern medicine, in contrast to society's often skeptical reception toward the power of art. As the artist recalled, 'I was with my mum in the chemist's; she was getting a prescription, and it was, like, complete trust on the one level in something she's equally in the dark about. In the medicine cabinets there's no actual medicine in the bottles. It's just completely packaging and formal sculpture and organized shapes. My mum was looking at the same kind of stuff in the chemist's and believing in it completely. And then, when looking at it in an art gallery, completely not believing in it. As far as I could see, it was the same thing' (D. Hirst quoted in D. Hirst & G. Burn, On the Way to Work, London, 2001, p. 25).
Just as people used to instinctively follow various organized systems of belief, we hand our lives over to the alchemy of our doctors. Hirst became particularly aware of this after the death of his grandmother in 1988. He began his medicine cabinet series that year, raiding her cabinet for inspiration and arranging the medical packaging in a glass-fronted box. Organized according to aesthetic principles, the immensely alluring lines of beautifully coloured pills draw us in just as the talismans, relics, paintings and charms of other faiths have done throughout time.
Hirst has often stated his belief that art has its own curative powers, not only in terms of therapy. In Day by Day, he openly proclaims his conviction in the power of art through the use of medical equipment and pharmaceuticals in the work. In this case, however, it is not the medicine in the pills, but the actual artwork that cures humanity. The work touches upon many of Hirst's key concerns: medicine, death, life, reality, art and its curative powers, while also having its own striking formal aesthetic presence through the richly alluring burst of colour. This is hugely importance to Hirst, who has explained that all 'painting and all art should be ultimately uplifting for a viewer. I love colour. I feel it inside me. It gives me a buzz' (D. Hirst, I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now, London, 1997, p. 246).
In Day by Day Hirst illuminates the shocking blind faith which society endows upon modern medicine, in contrast to society's often skeptical reception toward the power of art. As the artist recalled, 'I was with my mum in the chemist's; she was getting a prescription, and it was, like, complete trust on the one level in something she's equally in the dark about. In the medicine cabinets there's no actual medicine in the bottles. It's just completely packaging and formal sculpture and organized shapes. My mum was looking at the same kind of stuff in the chemist's and believing in it completely. And then, when looking at it in an art gallery, completely not believing in it. As far as I could see, it was the same thing' (D. Hirst quoted in D. Hirst & G. Burn, On the Way to Work, London, 2001, p. 25).
Just as people used to instinctively follow various organized systems of belief, we hand our lives over to the alchemy of our doctors. Hirst became particularly aware of this after the death of his grandmother in 1988. He began his medicine cabinet series that year, raiding her cabinet for inspiration and arranging the medical packaging in a glass-fronted box. Organized according to aesthetic principles, the immensely alluring lines of beautifully coloured pills draw us in just as the talismans, relics, paintings and charms of other faiths have done throughout time.
Hirst has often stated his belief that art has its own curative powers, not only in terms of therapy. In Day by Day, he openly proclaims his conviction in the power of art through the use of medical equipment and pharmaceuticals in the work. In this case, however, it is not the medicine in the pills, but the actual artwork that cures humanity. The work touches upon many of Hirst's key concerns: medicine, death, life, reality, art and its curative powers, while also having its own striking formal aesthetic presence through the richly alluring burst of colour. This is hugely importance to Hirst, who has explained that all 'painting and all art should be ultimately uplifting for a viewer. I love colour. I feel it inside me. It gives me a buzz' (D. Hirst, I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now, London, 1997, p. 246).