Name: Fast Scarlett TR Base
Brand: Damien Hirst
Rating: 5 (233 reviews)

Track auction value trend

Damien Hirst's Fast Scarlett TR Base (signed) from 2011, a woodcut print, is estimated to be worth between £16,000 and £24,000. This artwork has shown consistent value growth, with an average annual growth rate of 15%. This is a rare work with an auction history of two total sales since its entry to the market on 16th July 2014. The hammer price over the past five years has ranged from £11,065 in March 2020 to £20,642 in November 2021. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 55.

Auction Date

Auction House

Location

Hammer Price

Return to Seller

Buyer Paid

May 2021

Palm Beach Modern Auctions

United States

July 2014

Christie's New York

United States

Meaning & Analysis

Fast Scarlet TR Base is a woodcut print from Damien Hirst’s 40 Woodcut Spots series from 2011. The print is a landscape-oriented composition showing four rows of five spots, every spot the same size and each a different colour. Every print in the series is unique despite their shared grid composition formula.

read more about 40 Woodcut Spots

The 40 Woodcut Spots series is reminiscent of a vast body of work in Hirst’s oeuvre that has become iconic to his name. Hirst has created over 1000 spot paintings throughout his career between 1988 and 2011. Each with the same pictorial and optical efficiency it is almost impossible to decipher each spot painting from one another. Despite their deceiving simplicity, these works are laborious and painstaking to produce.

The first spot paintings were hand-painted spots that were messy, expressionist and dripped down an 8ft-by-12ft panel, created by Hirst in the final stages of the Freeze exhibition. The two painted arrangements of coloured spots onto the wall of the warehouse, titling them Edge and Row respectively and were first displayed in 1988. The Freeze exhibition marked a turning point in Hirst’s career where he began to employ assistants to create the spot paintings. This was part of the artist’s aims towards creating works that appear to have been produced mechanically and without human intervention.