Provenance
Jay Jopling, London
Private Collection, Switzerland
Exhibited
The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, Transforming the Known, 8 June – 29 September 2013
Literature
Robert Violette, ed., Damien Hirst, I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now, London, 2005, p. 244 (illustrated)
Jason Beard and Millicent Wilner, eds., Damien Hirst The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011, London, 2013, p. 117 and p. 829 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
An accurate arrangement of monochromatic points precisely organised within the plane, varying shades of black tones instil the work with motion and dimensionality. Executed in 1995, the year Damien Hirst won the Turner Prize, the present work is an early and important example of Hirst’s regimented Spot Paintings which have spanned more than two decades.

Unlike the polychromatic variations of Hirst’s Spot Paintings, the present work with its fluctuating tones of black brings Hirst’s role as a colourist into a new light. Commenting on his colour theory and their calculated nature, the artist asserts: ‘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’ (Damien Hirst and Gordon Burn, On the Way to Work, London, 2001, pp. 119-120). In line with Hirst’s pronouncements, in the present composition the notion of colour is redefined, each tone acts and interacts with the next in a flawless way.

Unfailingly and routinely paralleling the medical and the artistic, Hirst toys with the limits of artistic conception. 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... Art is like medicine, it can heal’ (Damien Hirst, I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now, London, 1997, p. 246). As in his carefully arranged Pill Paintings and Medicine Cabinets, the latticed framework of precisely painted dots in Cyclohexane presents the viewer with a strictly and aesthetically arranged harmony. Demonstrating an investigation of colour and tone within a calculated schema, evocative of the routine geometry of Josef Albers and his theoretical explorations, Hirst’s Spot Paintings are a distinctive and pivotal arrangement from the artist’s controversial oeuvre.

Hypnotising and homochromous, the present composition, Cyclohexane, shares a name with the colourless chemical acquired from petroleum or through hydrogenating benzene, and used as a solvent and paint remover. A playful paradox is presented by the artist in this work from the sub-series Deuterated Compounds, a composition formed of household gloss on canvas shares its name with a toxic paint-stripping substance. A revered series, characterised by regularity, the Spot Paintings were conceived during Hirst’s years at Goldsmiths, London. Initially consisting of circles one to four inches in diameter the spots have since grown to span from just one millimetre to sixty inches. Playing a crucial part in the upward trajectory of the Young British Artists (YBA’s), Hirst organised the inaugural exhibition Freeze in 1988 in which Spot Paintings were painted directly onto the exhibition walls.

Hirst persistently provokes discussion on contemporary art and his radical creative output is firmly rooted in the dicta of twenty-first century art. Through comprehensive and limitless evaluation of the boundaries of creation, from his earliest showcases of some of the YBA group's most distinctive work to his present show in Venice, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, Hirst reminds us of his unstoppable imagination. Cyclohexane is an early example of Damien Hirst’s revered Spot Paintings, an almost forensic investigation into the power of repetition and variation of colour and scale.
Artist Biography
Damien Hirst
British • 1965
There is no other contemporary artist as maverick to the art market as Damien Hirst. Foremost among the Young British Artists (YBAs), a group of provocative artists who graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London in the late 1980s, Hirst ascended to stardom by making objects that shocked and appalled, and that possessed conceptual depth in both profound and prankish ways.
Regarded as Britain's most notorious living artist, Hirst has studded human skulls in diamonds and submerged sharks, sheep and other dead animals in custom vitrines of formaldehyde. In tandem with Cheyenne Westphal, now Chairman of Phillips, Hirst controversially staged an entire exhibition directly for auction with 2008's "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever," which collectively totalled £111 million ($198 million).
Hirst remains genre-defying and creates everything from sculpture, prints, works on paper and paintings to installation and objects. Another of his most celebrated series, the 'Pill Cabinets' present rows of intricate pills, cast individually in metal, plaster and resin, in sterilized glass and steel containers; Phillips New York showed the largest of these pieces ever exhibited in the United States, The Void, 2000, in May 2017.
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Ο◆25

Damien Hirst

Cyclohexane

signed 'D S Hirst' on the reverse; further signed 'D S Hirst' on the stretcher
household gloss on canvas
152.4 x 152.4 cm (60 x 60 in.)
Painted in 1995.

Estimate
£600,000 - 800,000 ‡♠

Sold for £729,000

Contact Specialist
Henry Highley
Specialist, Head of Evening Sale
+ 44 20 7318 4061 hhighley@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London Auction 6 October 2017

1
Wolfgang Tillmans
Einzelgänger VIII
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ♠
Sold for £435,000
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2
Günther Förg
Untitled
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡♠
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3
Oscar Murillo
Just Dreams
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000 ♠
Sold for £187,500
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4
Ed Ruscha
Devil
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000
Sold for £273,000
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5
Albert Oehlen
Untitled
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡♠
Sold for £729,000
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6
Hurvin Anderson
Peter's Series: Back
Estimate £600,000 - 900,000 ‡♠
Sold for £1,809,000
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7
Cecily Brown
Park
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡♠
Sold for £849,000
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8
Adrian Ghenie
The Collector 4
Estimate £1,000,000 - 1,500,000 ‡♠
Sold for £2,049,000
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9
Albert Oehlen
La Playa Nueva
Estimate £700,000 - 900,000 ‡♠
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10
Sigmar Polke
Tänzerin
Estimate £2,500,000 - 3,500,000 ♠
Sold for £3,369,000
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11
Ilya Kabakov and Emilia Kabakov
Flying 12
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000 ‡
Sold for £212,500
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12
Sigmar Polke
Untitled
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ♠
Sold for £489,000
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13
Richard Prince
Untitled (Portrait)
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ‡
Sold for £561,000
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14
Richard Prince
Untitled (Cartoon)
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000
Sold for £125,000
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15
Agostino Bonalumi
Bianco e Nero
Estimate £180,000 - 250,000 ♠
Sold for £225,000
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16
Enrico Castellani
Superficie bianca
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ♠
Sold for £200,000
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17
Paolo Scheggi
Eclisse
Estimate £300,000 - 400,000 ♠
Sold for £525,000
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18
Josef Albers
Study for Homage for the Square; Sel: E. B. 4
Estimate £300,000 - 400,000
Sold for £345,000
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19
Walter Leblanc
Twisted Strings
Estimate £180,000 - 220,000 ‡♠
Sold for £187,500
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20
Ai Weiwei
Map of China
Estimate £800,000 - 1,200,000 ‡
Sold for £789,000
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21
Andy Warhol
Knives
Estimate £2,000,000 - 3,000,000 ‡
Sold for £2,649,000
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22
Andy Warhol
Gun (Cowboy six shooter)
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £273,000
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23
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled
Estimate £600,000 - 900,000 ‡
Sold for £1,569,000
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24
Andreas Gursky
Los Angeles
Estimate £1,400,000 - 1,800,000 ♠
Sold for £1,689,000
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25
Damien Hirst
Cyclohexane
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡♠
Sold for £729,000
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26
Sarah Lucas
Supersensible
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡♠
Sold for £237,000
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27
Damien Hirst
Sad Steps - Life Fulfilled
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡♠
Sold for £729,000
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28
Glenn Ligon
Stranger Study #11
Estimate £300,000 - 400,000 ‡
Sold for £345,000
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29
David Hammons
Moving to the Other Side
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000 ‡
Sold for £175,000
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30
Ai Weiwei
Coca-Cola
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £297,000
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31
Ai Jing
I Love Color #11
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000 ‡
Sold for £87,500
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32
Gerhard Richter
Grau
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ‡♠
Sold for £405,000
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33
A.R. Penck
Ali Alpha Tor
Estimate £350,000 - 450,000 ‡♠
Sold for £369,000
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34
Georg Baselitz
Dreimal
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ♠
Sold for £261,000
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35
Anselm Kiefer
Voyage au Bout de la Nuit
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡♠
Sold for £489,000
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36
Manolo Valdés
Retrato de Dorothy III
Estimate £140,000 - 180,000 ‡♠
Sold for £261,000
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20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London Auction 6 October 2017

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Provenance

Exhibited

Literature

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

Damien Hirst

Ο◆25

Damien Hirst

Cyclohexane

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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