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Lot Essay
"In the spot paintings the grid-like structure creates the beginning of a system. On each painting no two colours are the same. This ends the system; it's a simple system. No matter how I feel as an artist or a painter, the paintings end up looking happy ... I believe painting and all art should ultimately be uplifting for a viewer. I love colour. I feel it inside me. It gives me a buzz." - Damien Hirst
Bold and precise, Calcium Hydride is a splendid example of Damien Hirst's signature spot paintings. An immaculate grid-like formation of uniquely-coloured dots, ranging from bright tones to pastel hues, covers a pristine white canvas. Painted in 2007, the work forms part of the monumental series of Pharmaceutical Paintings that span over two decades of Hirst's richly varied oeuvre . With each work taking its title from individual chemical compounds, the series constitutes an integral strand of Hirst's groundbreaking practice: a practice that, since the late 1980s, has deftly interrogated the boundaries between art and science in an attempt to explore the complex nature of the human condition. In contrast to some of the darker strains of his output, Hirst's spot paintings are among his most euphoric and celebratory works. Juxtaposing an almost molecular pictorial structure with a seemingly random selection of colours, Calcium Hydride presents an image of limitless chromatic possibility contained within a framework of formal perfection. "I once said that the spot paintings could be what art looks like viewed through an imaginary microscope", writes Hirst. "I love the fact that in the paintings the angst is removed ... the colours project so much joy it's hard to feel it, but it's there" (D. Hirst, quoted in D. Hirst, I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one,always, forever, now , p.246).
Hirst first rose to global prominence after his talent was recognized by the visionary collector Charles Saatchi, and he soon established himself as a central figure within the trailblazing Young British Artist (YBA) movement that swept throughout the UK art scene in the 1990s. Characterized by striking and frequently disarming visual statements that unabashedly engage with contemporary existential themes, Hirst's work has received widespread international acclaim. He was still a student at the prestigious Goldsmiths College of Art in London when he created his first spot paintings, and the series that followed has played an iconic role within the artist's diverse vocabulary. Despite his notorious sculptural and installation work, in media ranging from preserved animal carcasses to dead insects, Hirst had always aspired to be a painter, and it was the spot paintings that allowed him to systematically engage with the medium in new ways. It was in these works, too, that Hirst first found a way of expressing the dialogue between order and chaos that was to underpin so much of his subsequent work. "I was always a colourist...", claims the artist, "I just move colour around on its own. So that's what the spot paintings came from - to create that structure to do those colours... Mathematically, with the spot paintings, I probably discovered the most fundamentally important thing in any kind of art. Which is the harmony of where colour can exist on its own, interacting with other colours in a perfect format... The spot paintings are... just like, a very exciting discovery, where you get this scientific formula that you add to this sort of mess" (D. Hirst, quoted in D. Hirst and G. Burn, On the Way to Work , London 2001, pp. 119- 120 and 126).
Executed primarily between 1988 and 2011, the Pharmaceutical Paintings are the most renowned and significant among Hirst's various subsections of spot painting. As demonstrated by the present work, they are characterized by equal-sized dots, each equidistant from its neighbor, positioned on a white background without any repetition of colour. "I started them as an endless series..." explains Hirst,"a scientific approach to painting in a similar way to the drug companies' scientific approach to life. Art doesn't purport to have all the answers; the drug companies do. Hence the title of the series, the Pharmaceutical Paintings , and the individual titles of the paintings themselves" (D. Hirst, quoted in D. Hirst, I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now , London 1997, p. 246). The idea of a never-ending, infinite number of structural and chromatic combinations is mirrored in the unlimited plane of discovery embodied by scientific research. The titles of the works were taken from a book that Hirst chanced upon in the early 1990s - the chemical company Sigma-Aldrich's catalogue Biochemicals Organic Compounds for Research and Diagnostic Reagents. "It was just an afterthought to name them after drugs, based on this book, but I saw it and thought: I have just got to do all of them", claimed the artist (D. Hirst, quoted in The Agony and the Ecstasy: Selected Works from 1989-2004 , exh. cat., Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, 2004, p. 113).
The relationship between art and medicine has come to represent one of Hirst's most pertinent lines of enquiry. Indeed, a number of other significant series, including the Medicine Cabinets and Pill Cabinets , have engaged with this theme, adopting the same tendency towards structural order and patterning as the spot paintings. In addition, one of the artist's most impressive installation works, currently held in the Tate Modern, London, recreates the interior of a pharmacy in exquisite detail (Pharmacy , 1992). "Art is like medicine," Hirst once said. "It can heal. Yet I've always been amazed at how many people believe in medicine but don't believe in art" (D. Hirst, quoted in 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 the Pharmaceutical Paintings , Hirst's unlimited permutations of colour and pattern, each one unique, restore our faith in the art's incessant power to generate new forms; they envision a future of never-ending discovery and continued survival.
Bold and precise, Calcium Hydride is a splendid example of Damien Hirst's signature spot paintings. An immaculate grid-like formation of uniquely-coloured dots, ranging from bright tones to pastel hues, covers a pristine white canvas. Painted in 2007, the work forms part of the monumental series of Pharmaceutical Paintings that span over two decades of Hirst's richly varied oeuvre . With each work taking its title from individual chemical compounds, the series constitutes an integral strand of Hirst's groundbreaking practice: a practice that, since the late 1980s, has deftly interrogated the boundaries between art and science in an attempt to explore the complex nature of the human condition. In contrast to some of the darker strains of his output, Hirst's spot paintings are among his most euphoric and celebratory works. Juxtaposing an almost molecular pictorial structure with a seemingly random selection of colours, Calcium Hydride presents an image of limitless chromatic possibility contained within a framework of formal perfection. "I once said that the spot paintings could be what art looks like viewed through an imaginary microscope", writes Hirst. "I love the fact that in the paintings the angst is removed ... the colours project so much joy it's hard to feel it, but it's there" (D. Hirst, quoted in D. Hirst, I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one,always, forever, now , p.246).
Hirst first rose to global prominence after his talent was recognized by the visionary collector Charles Saatchi, and he soon established himself as a central figure within the trailblazing Young British Artist (YBA) movement that swept throughout the UK art scene in the 1990s. Characterized by striking and frequently disarming visual statements that unabashedly engage with contemporary existential themes, Hirst's work has received widespread international acclaim. He was still a student at the prestigious Goldsmiths College of Art in London when he created his first spot paintings, and the series that followed has played an iconic role within the artist's diverse vocabulary. Despite his notorious sculptural and installation work, in media ranging from preserved animal carcasses to dead insects, Hirst had always aspired to be a painter, and it was the spot paintings that allowed him to systematically engage with the medium in new ways. It was in these works, too, that Hirst first found a way of expressing the dialogue between order and chaos that was to underpin so much of his subsequent work. "I was always a colourist...", claims the artist, "I just move colour around on its own. So that's what the spot paintings came from - to create that structure to do those colours... Mathematically, with the spot paintings, I probably discovered the most fundamentally important thing in any kind of art. Which is the harmony of where colour can exist on its own, interacting with other colours in a perfect format... The spot paintings are... just like, a very exciting discovery, where you get this scientific formula that you add to this sort of mess" (D. Hirst, quoted in D. Hirst and G. Burn, On the Way to Work , London 2001, pp. 119- 120 and 126).
Executed primarily between 1988 and 2011, the Pharmaceutical Paintings are the most renowned and significant among Hirst's various subsections of spot painting. As demonstrated by the present work, they are characterized by equal-sized dots, each equidistant from its neighbor, positioned on a white background without any repetition of colour. "I started them as an endless series..." explains Hirst,"a scientific approach to painting in a similar way to the drug companies' scientific approach to life. Art doesn't purport to have all the answers; the drug companies do. Hence the title of the series, the Pharmaceutical Paintings , and the individual titles of the paintings themselves" (D. Hirst, quoted in D. Hirst, I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now , London 1997, p. 246). The idea of a never-ending, infinite number of structural and chromatic combinations is mirrored in the unlimited plane of discovery embodied by scientific research. The titles of the works were taken from a book that Hirst chanced upon in the early 1990s - the chemical company Sigma-Aldrich's catalogue Biochemicals Organic Compounds for Research and Diagnostic Reagents. "It was just an afterthought to name them after drugs, based on this book, but I saw it and thought: I have just got to do all of them", claimed the artist (D. Hirst, quoted in The Agony and the Ecstasy: Selected Works from 1989-2004 , exh. cat., Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, 2004, p. 113).
The relationship between art and medicine has come to represent one of Hirst's most pertinent lines of enquiry. Indeed, a number of other significant series, including the Medicine Cabinets and Pill Cabinets , have engaged with this theme, adopting the same tendency towards structural order and patterning as the spot paintings. In addition, one of the artist's most impressive installation works, currently held in the Tate Modern, London, recreates the interior of a pharmacy in exquisite detail (Pharmacy , 1992). "Art is like medicine," Hirst once said. "It can heal. Yet I've always been amazed at how many people believe in medicine but don't believe in art" (D. Hirst, quoted in 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 the Pharmaceutical Paintings , Hirst's unlimited permutations of colour and pattern, each one unique, restore our faith in the art's incessant power to generate new forms; they envision a future of never-ending discovery and continued survival.