Q: I’ve heard you were considering selling “spot painting” kits in stores?Ī: “I made an editioned piece called ‘paint by numbers’ where you could buy a box containing a blank canvas with dots printed on it, all numbered, and tins of paint, all numbered, and with brushes in the box where you could paint your own Damien Hirst. And then I lost faith in it and wanted to create a system where whatever decisions you make within a painting, the paintings end up happy. I was taught by painters who believed that as an artist you paint how you feel and I believed in that for a long time. Q: What is your thinking behind the spot paintings? How do you explain their relevance?Ī: “I wanted to find a way to use color in paintings that wasn’t expressionism. I’ve never had a problem with using assistants.” I think it’s important that they are handmade but equally important that they look machine made. Q: Can you talk about the genesis of the spot paintings? Where did the concept come from and why a ‘factory process’ instead of the usual way of applying brush to canvas?Ī: “Rather than think about whether a painting is important or high brow, I tried to imagine a painting that if you left it in the street outside a busy bar would it be still there in the morning or would someone think it looked cool enough to take home? They are made by applying a brush to canvas and they are hand made in that way. The show is a retrospective with loans from over 150 collectors from 20 different countries, but of course there are also some works for sale.” Q: What is behind this notion of dedicating all 11 Gagosian galleries to your spot paintings?Ī: “I have been making spot paintings for almost 25 years and have gone down many different roads with them and have always wanted to do a show that told the story of this body of work. Recently, he agreed to answer questions from Reuters via email, discussing his process and taking on his detractors. Hirst produced the paintings through his studio with the help of assistants but reportedly only painted five of them, causing some to question the integrity of the collection. Roughly half are on loan from private dealers while the other half are for sale. Of the roughly 1,400 canvases, 300 will be on display from January 12 spanning the globe in 11 galleries run by U.S. Since 1986, Hirst also produced a series he calls “spot paintings” - canvases featuring grids of dots of various colors and sizes. His “For the Love of God” (2007), a skull encrusted with 8,601 diamonds which sold for $100 million, and “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” (1991), a dead shark floating in formaldehyde, have been both derided as stunts and heralded as groundbreaking. REUTERS/Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Damien Hirst and Science Ltd/Courtesy Gagosian Gallery Damien Hirst's Controlled Substance Key Painting, 1994.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |