“I tell you what it is, I really like making [The Spin Paintings]. And I really like the machine, and I really like the movement. The movement sort of implies life.” Damien Hirst, 2001
Captivating in the frenetic energy that courses throughout the picture plane, Beautiful, Dangerous, Electrified, Bad Temper Painting is a visual testament to the artist’s profound enthusiasm for his materials and the spontaneity intrinsic to the process of painting. Galvanized by momentum and color, our eyes dart from hue to hue in the present lot, we resolutely attempt to trace Hirst’s motions as he adds layer after layer of pigment to a spinning canvas. Hirst’s obsession with death often dominates his production while the Spin paintings present compelling examples of the artist’s impressions of life, technology, and the sublime qualities of picture-making born of their feverish inception.
Hirst conceptualized and initiated the Spin series in 1994 while living in Berlin, shortly after acquiring a spin machine which facilitated the circular movement of large canvases. Though each work in the Spin series is archetypal in its composition, the works are further united by their protracted titles, which start with "Beautiful" and end in "painting." The present lot is an early Spin series, in which Hirst submerges the canvas in thick layers of lacquer that ebb and flow both in a circular gesture and linear direction. The richly saturated pink center of the work, encircled by a highly contrasting dark tonality, suggests the pupil of an eye, as if the painting were at once looking out onto the world and reflecting its chaotic and ecstatic spirit in color. Of the Spin paintings, Hirst has pondered, “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 and Gordon Burn, On the Way to Work, Faber and Faber, 2001)
For an artist renowned for his onerous approach to production, as in the spot paintings and his formaldehyde-submerged beasts, the chance factor that is inherent to pouring paint on a spinning machine lends a sense of elegance in the stark futility of production, manifested in Beautiful, Dangerous, Electrified, Bad Temper Painting.
