"I see every spot within each painting as being alone yet together with all the other spots; I can find the pieces sad or happy, or even dumb. I think I’ll always make them. Each painting is named after a drug alphabetically but I probably won’t keep doing it alphabetically. It feels a bit restricting. And they’re a bit childish-a bit like sweets (smarties) or drugs. I had my stomach pumped as a child because I ate pills thinking they were sweets. So did my brother."
(D. Hirst, I want to spend the rest of my life elsewhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now., London, 2006)
With a calculated blend of satire, cynicism and grandiosity, Damien Hirst’s "Spot Paintings" are loaded with questions and insinuations that are abstracted through his multi-coloured and perfectly aligned dots.The compositions assume precise titles of prescription medical drugs, incorporating Hirst's imaginative interpretation of the colours found on the Periodic Table of Elements and the molecular structure of atoms.
Conceptually Hirst explores the idea of faith in medicine, questioning its truthfulness and ability to mislead. As Hirst proclaims, "Art is like medicine - it can heal. Yet I've always been amazed at how many people believe in medicine, but don't believe in art, without questioning either."(R. Violet, ed., I want to Spend the Rest of My Life Elsewhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now., London, 1997, n.p.). Hirst's reference to prescription drugs brings to mind the mortality we cannot disregard despite mankind's overwhelmingly devout determination in the power of medicine. The artist reminds us that we are, after all, mortal.
Arranged Mathematically in a grid, Diethylene Glycol combines appearance and content into one large scale field of colour that is contrasted against a stark white background. The relationship between colour and emotional response as a possible therapeutic concept is fundamental in understanding this body of work. Looking back to major 20th Century artists and their styles, such as Kandinsky’s symphonies on colour, Barnett Newman’s colour field paintings and Pollock or Rothko’s representation of psychological turmoil through colour, Hirst’s "Spot Paintings" demonstrate that any geometric arrangement of colour can have a pleasing aesthetic impact on the mind. It is with this unique and individual quality of each spot, and the respective titles of the Spot Paintings that each work embodies the semiotic relationship between signified and signifier, between title and appearance – between "cause" and "cure". The Spot Paintings, as a result, are an important body of work within hirst's entire repertoire in which the artist confronts issues of life and death, while playing on the methodologies of formalism and iconography.