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Lot Essay
Damien Hirst's Cefoperazone is the quintessential modern painting, with its vivid palette, unrivalled technical execution and uncompromising uniformity. Yet we can trace the origins of his acclaimed Pharmaceutical Paintings to an age-old dilemma about the nature of painting. Hirst said that, as long as he could remember, he had wanted to be a painter, but felt that his predecessors had already discovered all the great innovations in painting. Cefoperazone results from Hirst exploring what it means to be painter in the 21st Century, arising from his unwavering desire to be a painter, yet unsure of what to paint. As he later recalled, this series was about, "the urge or the need to be a painter above and beyond the object of the painting...I believe that after Pollock created a distance between the brush and the paint, there was nowhere else to with painting...The urge to be a painter is still there even if the process of painting is meaningless, old fashioned" (D. Hirst, quoted in R. Violette, I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now, 1997, New York, p. 246).
Hirst solved the problem by taking painting in a new direction, devising grids of colored dots painted on a pristine white canvas. He made each dot of uniform size, equidistant from its neighbor. He repeated no color within the same canvas. This solution dismissed the need for composition, and the shapes' geometrical nature meant that the resulting canvas was neither abstract nor representational. Hirst thought of these works more as sculpture than traditional paintings, in that they did away with the infinite possibilities offered by the traditional placing pigment on canvas.
Cefoperazone also illustrates, with its pharmaceutical references, Hirst's belief that art should be uplifting. "Art is like medicine", he once said, "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" (Ibid.). Damien Hirst sought, through wide-ranging practice - installations, sculpture, painting and drawing - to challenge the boundaries between art, science and popular culture. His energy and inventiveness, and his constantly visceral, visually arresting work have made him a leading artist of his generation.
Hirst solved the problem by taking painting in a new direction, devising grids of colored dots painted on a pristine white canvas. He made each dot of uniform size, equidistant from its neighbor. He repeated no color within the same canvas. This solution dismissed the need for composition, and the shapes' geometrical nature meant that the resulting canvas was neither abstract nor representational. Hirst thought of these works more as sculpture than traditional paintings, in that they did away with the infinite possibilities offered by the traditional placing pigment on canvas.
Cefoperazone also illustrates, with its pharmaceutical references, Hirst's belief that art should be uplifting. "Art is like medicine", he once said, "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" (Ibid.). Damien Hirst sought, through wide-ranging practice - installations, sculpture, painting and drawing - to challenge the boundaries between art, science and popular culture. His energy and inventiveness, and his constantly visceral, visually arresting work have made him a leading artist of his generation.