Year: 2009
Medium: Acrylic and metallic paint on paper
Dimensions: 71 x 52 cm (28 x 20 1/2 in.)
Acquired from Sotheby's, 2022
This work was created to commemorate Hirst’s retrospective exhibition “Requiem”, held at Ukraine’s PinchukArtCentre (Kyiv) in 2008. Hirst produced multiple new “spin paintings” for display at this exhibition, alongside works such as his early masterpiece “A Thousand Years,” and “Death Explained,” in which a shark is soaked in formalin. To create these works, the artist attaches paper to a spinning machine (several pinholes can be seen, from when the paper was affixed to the machine), pours paint onto the spinning paper, and uses centrifugal force to spread the paint in a radial pattern. Hirst, an artist who is never out of the public eye for long, foreshadowed this work with “For the Love of God” (2007), an ethically challenging piece that involved implanting real human teeth into a skull made of platinum and diamonds (molded from a human skeleton). This sensational work was priced at about 12 billion Japanese yen at the time. The monetary value is entwined with the skull, symbolizing death, and diamonds, which represent desire and wealth—essentially, a vivid symbol of intense life. The inappropriate smile expresses the ideas of death and wealth associated with the skull, something only made possible by the fact that the work is by Hirst.
