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Lot Essay
‘But, at the end of the day, with all good art I just want to feel something about my existence or something’ (Damien Hirst)
Damien Hirst’s Beautiful Scary Clown in a Rockabilly Town Painting is a kaleidoscopic burst of colour. Astral rings of red, yellow, green, and dark blue give way to one another across the mammoth canvas as streaks of metallic gold erupt from the centre and flicker outward in spontaneous flares. Executed in 2006, the work is part of the artist’s Spin Painting series, which he began making more than a decade prior. To create them, Hirst affixed a canvas to a rotating motor and then poured pigments onto the whirling white expanse. This motion, its effects captured in centrifugal explosions of colour, was central to the final painting: ‘The movement,’ he has explained, ‘sort of implies life’ (D. Hirst, quoted in D. Hirst and G. Burn, On the Way to Work, London 2001, p. 221).
Hirst’s inspiration for the Spin Paintings emerged from memories of seeing the technique demonstrated during an episode of the children’s programme Blue Peter. His fascination piqued, he later attempted the method himself at a school fête: ‘I queued up all day and I was making them over and over again’, he recalled (D. Hirst, quoted in ‘Damien Hirst reveals Blue Peter inspiration’, BBC, 29 August 2012). He produced several examples in his Brixton studio in 1992. The following year, Hirst and the artist Angus Fairhurst organised their own spin stall at Joshua Compston’s legendary street fair A Fête Worse than Death in London’s Hoxton neighbourhood. Visitors were invited to pay 50p to create their own unique spin paintings, which the artists, dressed as clowns, would sign. The present work’s title, Beautiful Scary Clown in a Rockabilly Town Painting, seems to hark back to this event and its carnivalesque costumes.
As expressions of chance and vitality, the Spin Paintings represent a departure from the themes of decay and death that had characterised Hirst’s earlier work. They are optimistic visions that revel in the act of painting and all its attendant mythology, and for the artist they conjure the same sense of wonder he experienced as a child: ‘I really like making them’, he has said. ‘And I really like the machine, and I really like the movement. Every time they’re finished, I’m desperate to do another one’ (D. Hirst, quoted in D. Hirst and G. Burn, ibid., p. 221). At the same time, the series reflects Hirst’s emerging interest in automated processes—and the relationship between order and chaos—which has continued to inform his practice. Above all, works such as Beautiful Scary Clown in a Rockabilly Town Painting celebrate the power of paint, and by removing his own hand from the act, Hirst takes great pleasure in the medium’s unpredictable and manifold possibilities.
Damien Hirst’s Beautiful Scary Clown in a Rockabilly Town Painting is a kaleidoscopic burst of colour. Astral rings of red, yellow, green, and dark blue give way to one another across the mammoth canvas as streaks of metallic gold erupt from the centre and flicker outward in spontaneous flares. Executed in 2006, the work is part of the artist’s Spin Painting series, which he began making more than a decade prior. To create them, Hirst affixed a canvas to a rotating motor and then poured pigments onto the whirling white expanse. This motion, its effects captured in centrifugal explosions of colour, was central to the final painting: ‘The movement,’ he has explained, ‘sort of implies life’ (D. Hirst, quoted in D. Hirst and G. Burn, On the Way to Work, London 2001, p. 221).
Hirst’s inspiration for the Spin Paintings emerged from memories of seeing the technique demonstrated during an episode of the children’s programme Blue Peter. His fascination piqued, he later attempted the method himself at a school fête: ‘I queued up all day and I was making them over and over again’, he recalled (D. Hirst, quoted in ‘Damien Hirst reveals Blue Peter inspiration’, BBC, 29 August 2012). He produced several examples in his Brixton studio in 1992. The following year, Hirst and the artist Angus Fairhurst organised their own spin stall at Joshua Compston’s legendary street fair A Fête Worse than Death in London’s Hoxton neighbourhood. Visitors were invited to pay 50p to create their own unique spin paintings, which the artists, dressed as clowns, would sign. The present work’s title, Beautiful Scary Clown in a Rockabilly Town Painting, seems to hark back to this event and its carnivalesque costumes.
As expressions of chance and vitality, the Spin Paintings represent a departure from the themes of decay and death that had characterised Hirst’s earlier work. They are optimistic visions that revel in the act of painting and all its attendant mythology, and for the artist they conjure the same sense of wonder he experienced as a child: ‘I really like making them’, he has said. ‘And I really like the machine, and I really like the movement. Every time they’re finished, I’m desperate to do another one’ (D. Hirst, quoted in D. Hirst and G. Burn, ibid., p. 221). At the same time, the series reflects Hirst’s emerging interest in automated processes—and the relationship between order and chaos—which has continued to inform his practice. Above all, works such as Beautiful Scary Clown in a Rockabilly Town Painting celebrate the power of paint, and by removing his own hand from the act, Hirst takes great pleasure in the medium’s unpredictable and manifold possibilities.