Damien Hirst - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale London Thursday, October 12, 2023 | Phillips

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  • “I do believe somehow in the magic of art even though I don’t want to. I believe in science. I want clear answers.” —Damien Hirst

    Damien Hirst’s spin paintings can be seen as a nostalgic homage to childhood, exploring the notion of freedom. Devising a mechanical machine characterised by chance, each work is a vivid exploration of colour; hues overlap, interact and create the grounds for colour experimentation – each pigment collectively forming a relationship with the next.  A series parturiated from a performance by Hirst and fellow YBA Angus Fairhurst, developed the concept from an artist-led street fair A Fete Worse than Death, later became of central importance to the artist's career. 

     

    Exploding out from the centre of its circular canvas the deep burst of red accents the calm stability of purple and the fierce energy of red - evading the artist's hand infuses this work with a pronounced sense of movement. The iconographic skull in the forefront of the work is typical of Hirst’s works and further explores his fascination with the intersections of art and science.

    • Provenance

      Gagosian Gallery, New York
      Private Collection, New York
      Private Collection, Europe
      Acquired from the above by the present owner

    • Exhibited

      New York, Gagosian Gallery, Summer Group Show, 1 July - 31 August 2008

    • 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.

      View More Works

PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION

198

Beautiful Persephone Psychedelia Painting

signed, titled and dated 'Damien Hirst "Beautiful Persephone Psychedelia Painting" 2007' on the reverse; signed 'Damien Hirst' on the stretcher
household gloss on canvas
diameter 182.9 cm (72 in.)
Painted in 2008.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£150,000 - 200,000 ‡♠

Sold for £190,500

Contact Specialist

Charlotte Gibbs
Associate Specialist
+44 73931 41144
cgibbs@phillips.com

Simon Tovey
Specialist, Associate Director
+44 20 7318 4084
stovey@phillips.com
 

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale

London Auction 12 October 2023