Amniotic Fluid
Amniotic Fluid
Signed Print
Damien Hirst
Woodcut, 2012
Signed Print Edition of 55
H 31cm x W 31cm
Critical Review
Amniotic Fluid is a woodcut print from Damien Hirst’s 40 Woodcut Spots series from 2011, released in a limited edition of 55. The print shows a perfect circle in red, positioned in the centre of the square composition. Set against a plain white backdrop, this print appears like a drastically cropped version of one of Hirst’s more recognisable spot paintings. As a result, Amniotic Fluid is decidedly abstract.
This print is highly simplistic and immediate in its effect on the viewer, unambiguous in its depiction of a large spot with bright and flattened colour. Due to its smooth surface and obvious composition, this print deceptively removes any sense of human labour or touch. In the 1980s, the spot paintings marked a shift in Hirst’s artistic career, where he began to employ assistants to complete the painstaking and laborious task of producing these works. The apparent lack of human intervention in these works further emphasises the mathematical precision that underlines their compositions.
Fascinated by intuitive colour choice from his days at Goldsmiths, Hirst claims that the spot paintings have removed any problems he previously had with colour, allowing him to present a perfect arrangement of colour that is never repeated. Hirst explains that, “mathematically, with the spot paintings, I probably discovered the most fundamentally important thing in any kind of art. Which is the harmony of where colour can exist on its own, interacting with other colours in a perfect format.”
