Each distinct series within the expansive oeuvre of exhibitionist British artist Damien Hirst has, of its own right, become iconic of the ostentatious and grandiose public nature of the artist who has seized the spotlight on the international contemporary art stage. With works spanning a diverse spectrum of media, function, and social commentary—from dead animals suspended in enormous glass tanks of formaldehyde and diamond encrusted human skulls to colorful abstractions on canvas and glittering butterflies pinned under glass—Hirst continually pushes the limits of traditional conceptions of art and the artist. At the time already holding the record for the highest sale for a solitary work of art by a living European artist, Hirst broke further records when his 2008 solo auction realized a total sales amount 10 times higher than the previous record for a single artist. With over 80 solo exhibitions and 250 group shows over the course of his career, this past year Hirst enjoyed his second major retrospective in a decade, held at the Tate Modern in London. Through the varied range of his myriad series, Hirst still manages to maintain a unique signature aesthetic.



“I believe painting and all art should be ultimately uplifting for a viewer,” insists Hirst, “I love color. I feel it inside me. It gives me a buzz.” This celebration of color and its emotionally elevating effect serves as the primary impetus for Hirst’s ubiquitous spot abstractions. Since its inception in 1986, Hirst has continually expanded this deceptively simple series, with dots ranging in diameter from 1 millimeter to 90 centimeters, on canvases from 18 centimeters to over 12 meters in length. “The grid-like structure creates the beginning of a system,” explains Hirst, “On each painting no two colors are the same. This ends the system; it’s a simple system.” Each painting in the series maintains its own identity, never sharing the same sequence of colors, size, or arrangement. Hirst never replicates a color on the same canvas, avoiding the creation of a chord or obvious pattern within the works. Instead, Hirst explores the concept of each hue individually, finding, as he says, “the harmony of where color can exist on its own, interacting with other colors in a perfect format.” Such interaction of individual colors removes the sensation of a formal boundary, allowing the audience’s attention to wander between individual spots and the arrangement as a whole, meditating on the placement of each singular hue within the diverse spectrum displayed on the vast expanse of white.

Utilizing this internationally recognized series, Hirst joined forces with British band Squeeze in 2011 to create an exclusive set of customized instruments on which the band performed at the charity fundraiser Concerts for Teenage Cancer Trust. Hand-painted and signed by the artist himself, the set includes two electric guitars—a Fender Telecaster and a Fender Stratocaster (Lot 518) —along with a Spot Yamaha drum kit (Lot 517). Following the standardized grid structure of his paintings, Hirst’s diligently arranged, uniquely hued dots march across the blank white body of the guitar and over each individual drum shell, varying in diameter in accordance to the various size of the drums within the kit. A unique and exclusive set of instruments, both Fender Stratocaster and Spot Yamaha embody the playful nature of Hirst’s celebratory exploration of color.

Each series created by Damien Hirst embodies a sense of the immortal, expressing a commentary as unique as the individual spots which file relentlessly across the diversely sized canvases. “I want to make art,” Hirst states simply, “create objects that will have meaning forever. It’s a big ambition, universal truth, but somebody’s gotta do it.”