.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
"They spin on the wall because I was annoyed with people asking which way up they were meant to be" (D. Hirst, 'I Want to Spend the Rest of my Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now', London, 1997, p.259).
This work takes its title from the fact that it was offered as the prize for a competition that Damien Hirst set for the 'Big Issue' magazine. All of Hirst's Spin paintings are titled 'Beautiful...' followed by a series of other descriptive words relating to the work in question. The title for this work relates to the first riddle question of the competition, the name of the eventual prizewinner and a brief description of the painting. Hirst started to make these 'Beautiful' paintings in 1995, 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'. The technique involves the spinning of the canvas on a potters wheel and the pouring of household emulsion onto the spinning canvas creating a startling array of splatted colour. Onto this work Hirst has pasted part of the 'Big Issue' logo and a smoked cigarette. For Hirst the butt of a cigarette is a symbol of death as evidenced in his work 'Dead Ends' of 1993 and by the fact that he has confessed to thinking of death as evidenced in his work 'Dead Ends' of 1993 and by the fact that he has confessed to thinking of death every time he finishes a cigarette.
This work takes its title from the fact that it was offered as the prize for a competition that Damien Hirst set for the 'Big Issue' magazine. All of Hirst's Spin paintings are titled 'Beautiful...' followed by a series of other descriptive words relating to the work in question. The title for this work relates to the first riddle question of the competition, the name of the eventual prizewinner and a brief description of the painting. Hirst started to make these 'Beautiful' paintings in 1995, 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'. The technique involves the spinning of the canvas on a potters wheel and the pouring of household emulsion onto the spinning canvas creating a startling array of splatted colour. Onto this work Hirst has pasted part of the 'Big Issue' logo and a smoked cigarette. For Hirst the butt of a cigarette is a symbol of death as evidenced in his work 'Dead Ends' of 1993 and by the fact that he has confessed to thinking of death as evidenced in his work 'Dead Ends' of 1993 and by the fact that he has confessed to thinking of death every time he finishes a cigarette.