Colour Charts by Damien Hirst

Colour Charts by Damien Hirst

‘The Colour Charts’ allow Hirst to continue his exploration of “pinning down the joy of colour”, which began with the spot paintings.

He explains the twofold appeal of the series: “The Colour Charts’ mean you get to kill two birds with one stone, or I do: I get to please myself with that joy of colour but then also it’s a found object, something I’ve found in the real world and reproduced. They’re about the nature of art: something very comforting in the real world can become terrifying in works of art. What’s comforting in a work of art is a faithful representation of the real thing, so once you take an object from the real world and make it into a great big painting it becomes a terrifying thing […] people just go ‘why?’ and the question ‘why?’ horrifies people, [they just go] why would you do that?”