Name: Ethisterone
Brand: Damien Hirst
Rating: 4.9 (226 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of Damien Hirst’s Ethisterone (signed) is estimated to be worth between £3,500 and £5,000. This woodcut print, created in 2011, has an auction history of one sale on 27th February 2014. There have been no sales in the last 12 months and the hammer price in the last five years has remained consistent. This work is part of a limited edition of 55 and has shown an average annual growth rate of 6%.

Auction Date

Auction House

Artwork

Hammer Price

Return to Seller

Buyer Paid

February 2014

Wright - United States

Ethisterone - Signed Print

Meaning & Analysis

Ethisterone is a woodcut print from Damien Hirst’s 40 Woodcut Spots series from 2011. The print shows various coloured spots arranged methodically into three rows of three. Each spot is a different colour and every print in the series represents a unique set of colour combinations.

The cold repetition and sterile aesthetic of the 40 Woodcut Spots series is reminiscent of Hirst’s early pill cabinet works such as The Void from 2000. Both works evoke a sense of endless sameness and directly allude to the realms of medicine and science. Indeed, the chemical name of each print in this series evokes a nondescript powder or pill that is abstract in its scientific mode.

The formulaic compositions of the 40 Woodcut Spots series explore the boundaries between aesthetics and science and are based in Hirst’s fascination with colour combinations and harmony. Not only this, but this almost mathematic way of structuring his compositions in the 40 Woodcut Spots series works to create visually complex works that become difficult to decipher from one another. The 40 Woodcut Spots series embodies Hirst’s artistic oeuvre that interrogates the intersections between the scientific and the artistic that are wrongly assumed to be oppositional in contemporary culture.