DAMIEN HIRST | ACETIC ANHYDRIDE

Gagosian Gallery, New York

Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above)

Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011, Gagosian Gallery, London 2013, p. 486, illustrated

“I often get asked about the spot paintings… they have nothing to do with Richter or Poons or Bridget Riley or Albers or even Op. They’re about the urge or the need to be a painter above and beyond the object of a painting. I’ve often said that they are like sculptures of paintings. I started them as an endless series like a sculptural idea of a painter (myself). A scientific approach to painting in a similar way to the drug companies’ scientific approach to life. Art doesn’t purport to have all the answers; the drug companies do. Hence the title of the series, The Pharmaceutical Paintings, and the individual titles of the paintings themselves… 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.”

(Damien Hirst, “On Dumb Painting”, I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, With Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now, p. 246)