Six Pills
Six Pills
Signed Print
Damien Hirst
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38 x 44cm, Edition of 125, Digital Print
Medium: Digital Print
Edition size: 125
Year: 2004
Size: H 38cm x W 44cm
Signed: Yes
Format: Signed Print
Last Auction: October 2024
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Meaning & Analysis
Six Pills, produced in 2004 by British artist Damien Hirst, is a signed digital print of the same image as his Six Pills (large) screen print. The colours of the digital print appear more vibrant, which is visible most clearly in the pink pill in the top right. The image depicts six pills, arranged on symmetrically on two shelves.
Hirst’s Six Pills illustrates his continued interest in medicinal visual modes. He has previously stated that “Pills are a brilliant little form, better than any minimalist art. They’re all designed to make you buy them… they come out of flowers, plants, things from the ground, and they make you feel good, you know, to just have a pill, to feel beauty.” Considering that this is how Hirst viewed medicine, it makes sense that he sought to use them as a source of visual beauty, in relation to how they make us feel when we take them.
This statement is indicative of his continued interest in the intersection between science and art: the pill being one of the foremost visual manifestations through which Hirst was able to express this interest. This interest had longstanding origins. In the 1980s Hirst first introduced his Medicine Cabinet. He latterly expanded on this theme in his 2000 work The Void. Subsequently, prints such as these were part of a continued interest in medicine. Two Pills, produced in 2004, is extremely similar in approach to this print. It is indicative of how pills provided Hirst with an opportunity to create an expansive series.
Damien Hirst, born in Bristol in 1965, is often hailed the enfant terrible of the contemporary art world. His provocative works challenge conventions and his conceptual brilliance spans installations, paintings, and sculptures, often exploring themes of mortality and the human experience. As a leading figure of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement in the late '80s, Hirst's work has dominated the British art scene for decades and has become renowned for being laced with controversy, thus shaping the dialogue of modern art.