About
I was always a colorist. I’ve always had a phenomenal love of color. . . . I mean, I just move color around on its own. So that’s where the Spot paintings came from—to create that structure to do those colors, and do nothing. I suddenly got what I wanted. It was just a way of pinning down the joy of color.
—Damien Hirst
Gagosian is pleased to present The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011 by Damien Hirst.
The exhibition will take place at once across all of Gagosian’s eleven locations in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong, opening worldwide on January 12, 2012. Most of the paintings are being lent by private individuals and public institutions, with more than 150 different lenders from twenty countries. Conceived as a single exhibition in multiple locations, The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011 makes use of this demographic fact to determine the content of each exhibition according to locality.
Included in the exhibition are more than three hundred paintings, including the first spot on board that Hirst created in 1986; the smallest Spot painting comprising half a spot and measuring less than a square inch (1996); a monumental work comprising only four spots, each sixty inches in diameter; and the most recent Spot painting (completed in 2011), containing 25,781 spots that are each one millimeter in diameter, with no single color ever repeated.
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![Damien Hirst and Ashley Bickerton during an installation at Newport Street Gallery, London, c. 2017](https://gagosian.com/media/images/quarterly/interview-truth-revealed-damien-hirst-and-james-fox-ashley-bickerton/bSEADvetmJ8C_275x275.jpg)
Truth Revealed: Damien Hirst and James Fox on Ashley Bickerton
In conversation with James Fox, Damien Hirst reflects on the artwork of his longtime friend.
![Damien Hirst's Reclining Woman on the cover of Gagosian Quarterly, Fall 2021](https://gagosian.com/media/images/quarterly/gagosian-quarterly-fall-2021/i3hYr7LJsnK8_275x275.jpg)
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2021
The Fall 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Damien Hirst’s Reclining Woman (2011) on its cover.
![Andrea Domenico Remps, Cabinet of Curiosities, c. 1690, oil on canvas, 39 × 54 inches (99 × 137 cm), Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence, Italy.](https://gagosian.com/media/images/quarterly/essay-for-sale-baby-shoes-never-worn/BPueA9WM4Iji_275x275.jpg)
For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never Worn.
Sydney Stutterheim meditates on the power and possibilities of small-format artworks throughout time.
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In the Studio: Damien Hirst’s Veil Paintings
Damien Hirst speaks about his Veil paintings with Gagosian’s Alison McDonald. “I wanted to make paintings that were a celebration,” he says, “and that revealed something and obscured something at the same time.”
![Damien Hirst, Happiness, 1993–94, oil on canvas, 24 × 17 ⅞ inches.](https://gagosian.com/media/images/quarterly/essay-damien-hirst-visual-candy/0-WgGwyFsbFN_275x275.jpg)
Damien Hirst: Visual Candy
James Fox considers the origins of Damien Hirst’s Visual Candy paintings on the occasion of a recent exhibition of these early works in Hong Kong.
![Damien Hirst, Fruit Salad, 2016, household gloss on canvas, 16 × 24 inches.](https://gagosian.com/media/images/quarterly/damien-hirst-colour-space-paintings/rmNfWLr6OrJZ_275x275.jpg)
Damien Hirst: Colour Space Paintings
Blake Gopnik examines the artist’s “dot” paintings in relation to the history of representation in Western art, in which dabs of paint have served as fundamental units of depiction and markers of objective truth.