Provenance
White Cube, London; Private Collection, Korea
Catalogue Essay
“I did the spot paintings to solve formal problems with colour”
Damien Hirst

5-Aminouracil belongs to Damien Hirst’s spot painting series, a series he intended to continue throughout his career. His spot paintings have received vast commercial and critical success since their conception in the late 1980s. The production of spot paintings has diminished little, and arguably will reach their climax with the Gagosian Gallery show, Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011, planned to take place in all eleven worldwide Gagosian Gallery spaces in early 2012. Each location will house individual exhibitions, exclusively made up of spot paintings. Never before will an artist, let alone a specific series, have received such international attention as with this forthcoming show. Hirst’s ability to push the boundaries, not only in his artwork, but as a marketing magnet is unparalleled.

5-Aminouracil, executed in 2007, with its spherical canvas, large broadly spaced dots and mechanical precision has all the subtle characteristics of a recent spot painting. Hirst created his first versions of the spot paintings directly onto the walls of the warehouse in his breakthrough exhibition, ‘Freeze’, in 1988. His hand-painted works on canvas soon followed in the early 1990s. Similar aesthetics and ideologies are applied to 5-Aminouracil as with his early spot paintings. Hirst’s spot paintings and pill cabinets are a modern day hybrid of the abstract expressionism of the 1950s and the minimalism of the early 1960s. The formal, systematic, colour building block arrangement of the present lot is reminiscent of an early Ellsworth Kelly colour chart or a Carl Andre grid-format sculpture.

“In the spot paintings the grid-like structure creates the beginning of a system. On each painting no two colours are the same. This ends the system; it’s a simple system. No matter how I feel as an artist or a painter, the paintings end up looking happy. I can still make all the emotional decisions about colour that I need to as an artist, but in the end they are lost.”
(the artist, quoted in Damien Hirst, I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now, London, 1997, p. 246)

Hirst’s spot paintings make the association between religion and science, two perpetual themes throughout his work, increasingly apparent by referencing medication in their titles. 5-Aminouracil takes its title from a chemical compound found in prescription medication, as is the case with all paintings from this series. It exemplifies a fundamental shift in modern society, from religious faith to an almost vulnerable faith in science and medicine. Hirst has produced a series that apotheosizes medication, an image of worship for the present day cult of science. His iconic Spot paintings, of which 5-Aminouracil is a flawless archetype on a rare circular canvas, have come to denote not only the conception of the Young British Artists but a renaissance in contemporary art.
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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12

Damien Hirst

5-Aminouracil

2007
Household gloss on canvas.
Each spot: 10.2 cm (4 in) diameter; overall: 213.4 cm (84 in) diameter.
Signed, titled and dated ‘“5-Aminouracil” 2007 Damien Hirst’ on the reverse; further signed ‘D. Hirst’ on the stretcher.

Estimate
£600,000 - 800,000 ‡♠

Sold for £690,850

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

12 October 2011
London

1
Walead Beshty
20-inch Copper (FedEx® Large Kraft Box© 2005 FEDEX 330508) International Priority, Los Angeles–London trk#8685 8772 8040, date October 2–6, 2009. International Priority London–New York trk#863822956489, date November 18–20, 2009, International Priority New York–London trk#7952 0098 1790, date September 19–21, 2011
Estimate £20,000 - 30,000 ‡♠
Sold for £46,850
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2
Jacob Kassay
Untitled
Estimate £50,000 - 70,000
Sold for £163,250
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3
Maurizio Cattelan
Tié
Estimate £50,000 - 70,000 ♠
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4
Tauba Auerbach
CMY 5
Estimate £15,000 - 20,000 ‡
Sold for £49,250
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5
Aaron Young
Untitled
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000
Sold for £87,650
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6
Steven Parrino
Creeping Eye
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000
Sold for £361,250
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7
This lot is no longer available.
8
Cecily Brown
The Torment of St. Anthony
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡♠
Sold for £265,250
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9
Damien Hirst
Observation – The Crown of Justice
Estimate £700,000 - 1,000,000 ‡♠
Sold for £780,450
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10
Jeff Koons
Seal Walrus Trashcans
Estimate £2,000,000 - 3,000,000 ‡
Sold for £2,113,250
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11
Lucio Fontana
Concetto spaziale
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12
Damien Hirst
5-Aminouracil
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡♠
Sold for £690,850
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13
Maurizio Cattelan
Turisti
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ♠
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14
George Condo
Cave Painting
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15
Cecily Brown
Park
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡♠
Sold for £421,250
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16
Richard Prince
My Life as a Weapon
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ‡
Sold for £541,250
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17
Anselm Kiefer
Die Argonauten
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ♠
Sold for £601,250
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18
Anselm Kiefer
Sternenfall
Estimate £90,000 - 120,000 ‡♠
Sold for £109,250
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19
Paula Rego
The Servant
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ♠
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20
George Condo
Two works: (i) The Departure, 2004; (ii) The Arrival, 2004
Estimate £300,000 - 400,000 ‡
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21
Thomas Schütte
United Enemy
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ♠
Sold for £481,250
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22
Andreas Gursky
Copan
Estimate £180,000 - 250,000 ‡♠
Sold for £217,250
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23
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Ligurian Sea, Frumura
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
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24
Ed Ruscha
Judy
Estimate £180,000 - 220,000 ‡
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25
Cindy Sherman
Untitled #122
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000
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26
Sol LeWitt
5 Cubes Half-Off
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000
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27
Richard Serra
Tracks #2
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡
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28
Robert Motherwell
Frontier No. 12
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29
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol
Thin Lips
Estimate £700,000 - 1,000,000 ‡
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30
Gilbert & George
Heart
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡♠
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31
Johannes Kahrs
Eifer-Sucht (Jealousy)
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000 ‡♠
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32
Barnaby Furnas
Flood (Red Sea)
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000 †
Sold for £169,250
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33
Marc Quinn
Red Lantern Cove
Estimate £85,000 - 120,000 ‡♠
Sold for £91,250
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34
Tom Friedman
Untitled (T.V. Sprinkles)
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 Ω
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35
Nicolas Pol
Specialist of Peace
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36
Tim Noble and Sue Webster
Toxic Schizophrenia
Estimate £180,000 - 250,000 Ω♠
Sold for £229,250
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Contemporary Art Evening Sale

12 October 2011 London

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Provenance

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

Damien Hirst

12

Damien Hirst

5-Aminouracil

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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12 October 2011
London