Damien Hirst, Midas Asteroid, 2007. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art, London.
The ‘90s are over. We don’t take pills for that anymore. OK Computer is ten years old.
No more mass-produced solutions; we’re healing ourselves now.
Coming out of the decade of pharmaceutical solutions, Damien Hirst takes us on a self-guided journey endemic to the 24/7 handheld world that followed it in our 4 December New Now London Auction. Ranging from 2007 to 2021, these works offer an expansive look at Hirst’s themes during a time in which pop culture began to look inward as our capacity to connect grew ever wider. Central to the artist’s works from this era is the notion of being present in the moment, of experiencing the totality of colour, paint, and expression at the instant of its creation. These works act as visual reminders of a recent past filled with caption-worthy mantras, telling us to be…
As momentous as an asteroid
Hirst’s 2007 work Midas Asteroid is a remarkable bridge between the artist’s earlier themes and his subsequent explorations of worldly and mythical connections, united here by Hirst’s ever-present musings on mortality. Named after the potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroid that was discovered in 1973, the butterflies’ physical path across the canvas traces the vortices of a strike on humanity. The present work also references the myth of King Midas, who was granted the ability and curse to turn everything that he touched into gold; here, the seductive colour of wealth and luxury has trapped the butterflies ex situ. Hirst provides a duality to consider: the one who is mired thinks of being fixed. The asteroid only thinks of moving forward, now only with new passengers.
As ever-ready as a wheel
Damien Hirst, Beautiful, Timeless, Tranquility Spin Painting for Deron, 2016. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art, London.
Combining themes of nostalgia, movement, and the relationship between the artist and their tools, the Spin Paintings are among Hirst’s most important and revisited works, appearing in a variety of scales, palettes, mediums, and shapes over the series, now in its third decade. Using household paint on a rotating canvas to create brilliant layers, Hirst returns to his Spin Paintings to present expression in its purest form. In Beautiful, Timeless, Tranquility Spin Painting Hirst continues to radically unravel the formal apparatus of the art canon, asserting the primacy of gesture and material, as well as the nature of a cycle as a realm of constant possibility. A wheel turns, it stops. It goes again, aware that it can change direction with each spin.
As cherished as a psalm
Damien Hirst, Psalm 3: Domine, quid multiplicati?, 2008. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art, London.
The Psalm series is made up of 150 works of butterfly wings and paint arranged in kaleidoscopic mandala patterns reminiscent of cathedral glass windows. A meditation on the aesthetic qualities of religion and its overlap with the natural world, secular beauty, and the faithful-or-not inevitability of death, the collection is perfectly exemplified by Psalm 3, which reads: Lord, how are they increased that trouble me! (Domine quid multiplicati sunt, for the philologists), and is considered a lesson in salvation by maintaining faith even in times of personal difficulty. The word psalm itself derives from the Greek psalmos, or the twanging of a harp, from psallein, to pluck. Given the delicate formation of these butterfly wings without bodies, they can only be described as plucked from nature and rendered unto the divine. In this way it is not our physical presence that endures, rather it is our own sublime image that carries on.
As intentional as a veil
Damien Hirst, PV74. Lucid Veil, 2021. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art, London.
Hirst’s Veil Paintings meditate on the beauty and impact of composition and transformation across a constellation of vibrant, layered colours. "I want you to get lost in them,” Hirst notes. “I want you to fall into them, and I want them to delight your eyes and make you want to stay in the painting." The present work hails from the warmer portion of Hirst’s grid, with sunset hues scattered beneath topographical yellows and floral pinks. In its quintessentially Hirstian way, the veil gives and takes; it offers and withholds for the viewer. Our attention is given either to its whole or its specifics; to focus on one layer obfuscates another, and yet we engage with them directly, as if swept up by colour and gesture. It is a reminder to take it all in when the moment emerges, and to leave the analysis for after the celebrations.
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