From Spot Painting
to Gemism

January 13, 2012, New York

Damien Hirst is a multitalented person. Without any evident effort he can stop making dissected animals art (inspired by pathology anatomy of Francis Bacon) and switch to a new project full of fresh colors – Spot Paintings. Relying on art market intuition of Larry Gagosian, Damien Hirst makes an unprecedented experiment – simultaneously showing spot paintings at Gagosian’s 11 galleries worldwide.

Non-objective color illustration of spots by Damien Hirst continues classical tradition of artists who worked with a simple round form. This tradition was started by George Seurat (Pointillisme) and continued by:

Kazimir Malevich (Suprematist compositions)
Vassily Kandinsky (Point and line to plane)
Marcel Duchamp (Plastic forms of Dadaism)
Victor Vasarely (Competition of a square with a spot)
John Baldessari (Spot as an image)
Roy Lichtenstein (Spot in pop art)

Some Russian avant-garde artists of 1915-1923 were especially found of a round form. Among them, Vladimir Tatlin, El Lissitzky, Lubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko, Alexandra Exter.

In his spot painting project Damien Hirst attempts to resolve problems of color-dimensional composition, contrast of colors, rhythm of color and intensity of color. He then moves to color assembling based on laws of the color. Yet one can find a sense of dissatisfaction in spot painting of an artist who only recently adorned a human skull with gem stones (For the Love of God, 2007). Each individual spot on Damien Hirst’s paintings has the quality of being incomplete, unfinished – i.e. it does not work inside the form. Yet each paintings’ composition and rhythm perfectly support the format. Gemism – art movement established by Anton S. Kandinsky – allows to go inside of each round form. Gemism fuses spot painting of Damien Hirst with his diamonds encrusted skull into one art form and transforms spot painting into “spot gemism”.

Gemism brings new aesthetical meaning to each spot and provides superior sense of its appreciation. Damien Hirst created a well defined structure of spot painting, which gemism takes to perfection.

By Anton S. Kandinsky