beautiful, four cheese, spicy, quatro, staggioni, florentine, michelangelo, venetian glass, pamplona painting

In 1995, Damien Hirst began a series of works that have become known as the 'Spin Paintings'. In these works, paint was poured over a rotating circular canvas. Hirst started to make these "Beautiful paintings", inspired he says, by memories of the technique of spin painting he saw as a child on the popular children's television program 'Blue Peter'.
In their joyfulness and playfulness, these paintings represent a departure from Hirst's more morbid formaldehyde works. Hirst stated that he created these paintings because he "was annoyed by people asking which way up they were meant to be.' (Damien Hirst, 'I want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now', London 1997, p. 259) Thus, by producing "beautiful" paintings, he is also questioning the viewer's perception of what beautiful means, without, however, providing an answer.