Valium
Valium
Signed Print
Damien Hirst
£10,000-£15,000Value Indicator
$21,000-$30,000 Value Indicator
$19,000-$28,000 Value Indicator
¥100,000-¥150,000 Value Indicator
€12,000-€18,000 Value Indicator
$110,000-$160,000 Value Indicator
¥1,930,000-¥2,900,000 Value Indicator
$13,500-$20,000 Value Indicator
AAGR (5 years) This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.
There aren't enough data points on this work for a comprehensive result. Please speak to a specialist by making an enquiry.
Medium: Digital Print
Edition size: 500
Year: 2000
Size: H 125cm x W 125cm
Signed: Yes
Format: Signed Print
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Auction Results
| Auction Date | Auction House | Location | Hammer Price | Return to Seller | Buyer Paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 2025 | Bonhams New Bond Street | United Kingdom | |||
| November 2024 | Bonhams New Bond Street | United Kingdom | |||
| June 2024 | Arcadia Auction House | Italy | |||
| February 2024 | Rago | United States | |||
| November 2023 | Rosebery's Fine Art Auctioneers | United Kingdom | |||
| October 2023 | Christie's New York | United States | |||
| October 2023 | Forum Auctions London | United Kingdom |
Meaning & Analysis
Valium is a print by Damien Hirst from 2000 that shows hundreds of dots in many colours, arranged in a systematic circular composition. This print is a variation on Hirst’s famous Spots paintings, arguably his best-known series, of which there are over 1,400 works on canvas. The paintings are crucial to understanding Hirst’s quasi-scientific rationality that underpins much of his practice.
In an interview in 1991, Hirst observed of his Spots paintings: “I sometimes imagine that the Spots paintings are what my art looks like under the microscope. The difference between art and life is the difference between cells in the real world and the Spot Paintings… a way I can explain more directly how they relate is to think of them all as titled Isolated Elements for the Purpose of Understanding. The spots are separated from all the other spots by their boundary yet the colour takes them beyond that boundary and they communicate with each other… the way they are constructed is very uncompromising – the grid structure allows no emotion. I want them to look like they’ve been made by a person trying to paint like a machine… from this negative structure the end result is always a celebration, no matter how I feel.”
This work and Hirst’s other Spots paintings follow a regulated but basic system to create their compositions. The spots are each the same size within each painting and are positioned in grid-like formats. Valium is a variation on this system, the spots equally spaced but placed in a circular formation.
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.
