Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/56249
Spot On Art world provocateur Damien Hirst returns to the spotlight with a new solo show at the Tate Modern. BY RACHEL WOLFF Below, the artist; right, Hirst's Famotidine, 2004-11. I t's hard to imagine anything could top 2008 for the love- him-or-hate-him British art star Damien Hirst. As Lehman Brothers was filing for bankruptcy and the world began its downward spiral into the so-called "Great Recession," Hirst cashed in spectacularly, earning some $200 million in an unprecedented sale of his work at Sotheby's London. But 2012 may very well have it beat. Not only did the GOT SOME FREQUENT FLYER MILES TO BURN? Hirst has promised that anyone who manages to see all 11 exhibitions will score a free spotted print of their very own. artist convince his longtime dealer, the indomitable Larry Gagosian, to hand over all 11 of his galleries worldwide for a show dedicated to the hundreds of "Spot Paintings" he has churned out (or, more accurately, farmed out) over the past 25 years, he has scored a coveted, career-affirming exhibition at the Tate Modern as well. "Damien Hirst," on view April 4 through September 9 at the powerhouse London museum, will function as a mid-career retrospective of sorts for the 46-year-old provocateur with a sizable selection of some of his most iconic work, including the formaldehyde tanks (such as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a dead shark given the "Hirst" treatment in 1991), the medicine cabinets, the butterfly paintings, and of course, those spots. Conceived while he was still an art student at Goldsmiths in London, those orbs of pure, unadulterated house paint (that bedeck canvases of different shapes, sizes and colors) have evolved into something of a calling card. Produced en masse by assistants in Hirst's studio, they put forth a reasonable 60 BAL HARBOUR proposition: If contemporary fashion designers and furniture makers can outsource their work to better maximize their time and profits, why can't fine artists do the same? The Gagosian show runs through February 18 at most locations (New York, Paris, London, Los Angeles and Hong Kong), but extends through March 10 in Athens and Rome, and to March 17 in Geneva. About 300, (examples of which have sold at auction for as much as $3.2 million), works are included in total, on loan from some 150 collectors and museums—local ones, whenever possible, to illustrate the global reach of Hirst's polka-dotted oeuvre. The show also functions as a run-up of sorts to Hirst's hotly anticipated Tate Modern retrospective. Most spot paintings are named after the chemical monikers given to prescription drugs pre-brand name (Aminoantipyrine, Iminobiotin Hydrazide, Bromchlorophenol Blue…) and are meant to have blissful, disorienting and Vicodin-like effects. "The spot paintings were all about immortality," Hirst told The Guardian in 2009. "They're just a total celebration...In that moment, you feel you can live forever." Hirst had plans to retire the series altogether but changed his mind at the prospect of producing a one-million-spot painting, each spot a different color, each one millimeter wide. His assistants are working on it now in what has to be the most tedious apprenticeship of all time. (C) DAMIEN HIRST AND SCIENCE LTD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, DACS 2011. PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANTON CORBIJN