“I really like making them. And I really like the machine, and I really like the movement. Every time they’re finished, I’m desperate to do another one.”
Damien Hirst, 2001

Damien Hirst has solidified his position as the most widely maligned and critically acclaimed artist of the 20th century. Having first gained infamy in 1992 in Charles Saatchi’s exhibition Young British Artists, Hirst continues to push and expand the boundaries of contemporary art stretching the viewer’s perception of what is possible both with regards to the technique and technology as well as what is possible to contextualize as “art.” His spin paintings, of which Beautiful Ain’t That a Kick in the Head Painting from 2008 is a superb example, are the culmination of all of his eccentricity and enthusiasm for his materials and the spontaneity and energy inherent in the creative process.

Hirst has sometimes been portrayed as having an outsized interest in death; however, the spin paintings are a fantastic thread of his oeuvre which is almost completely oriented towards the celebration of life and technology, culture and the inherent beauty of things even in spite of the feverish activity of their own inception. Done in highly keyed color palettes such as here with its rich deep navies, electric yellows, and vermilion reds all set of and accentuated by the slash of black, Beautiful Ain’t That a Kick in the Head Painting seems to literally vibrate with its tonal energies. Each of the paintings in the series, which was first initiated in the early 1990’s, is titled “Beautiful…painting” and truly each one is an ecstatic and dynamic festivity of color and action, creation and destruction, humanism and technology.