DAMIEN HIRST | Painkillers

Gagosian Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner

New York, Gagosian Gallery, Damien Hirst: The Elusive Truth, March - May 2005, n.p., illustrated in colour

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the blue tones are slightly warmer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Very Close inspection reveals a few tiny media accretions in isolated places throughout and some very faint and light handling marks and very faint rub marks to all four extreme outer edges. Further very close inspections reveals some Faint drying cracks to the areas of navy paint. Close inspection reveals a few small and unobtrusive networks of cracks in isolated places. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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Damien Hirst’s Painkillers can be interpreted as a distinctly British reimagining of Andy Warhol’s iconic Campbell Soup Can paintings. Instantly recognisable and incredibly realistic, Painkillers could easily be mistaken for the actual item, hanging off the wall and ready to be prescribed to an incoming patient. Viewed within the context of Hirst’s well-known Natural History works and his Medicine Cabinets, the present work innovatively continues Hirst’s career-long investigation into the symbols of science and mortality. Executed between 2004 and 2005, Painkillers is a part of the Fact Paintings series, which reproduce photographs with realistic precision through the traditional medium of oil on canvas. This series investigates society’s inclination to categorise photography as fact and painting as fiction, positing the question as to whether it is photography’s medium or representation that imbues it with a sense of truth. Speaking of his thoughts behind the works, Hirst remarked: “I want them to be like newspaper pictures, factual and non-expressive. I want you to believe in them in the same way as you believe in the Medicine Cabinets" (Damien Hirst in conversation with Sarah Kent, Time Out, November 2006, online).

Painkillers references the themes of science and medical advertising that Hirst began to explore in his Medical Cabinets, which were initially conceived in his student days in 1989. Comprised of empty pill boxes entombed in transparent glass display cases, Hirst’s Medicine Cabinets pay homage to the Renaissance cabinets of curiosities which populated the private studies of scholars and royalty. By placing pharmaceutical packaging in a museum setting, Hirst highlights people’s faith in medical advertising as a peculiar phenomenon to contemporary society, claiming: “In 100 years’ time they will look like an old apothecary. A museum of something that’s around today” (Damien Hirst cited in: Exh. Cat., New York, L&M Arts, Damien Hirst: The Complete Medicine Cabinets, 2010, p. 139). Painkillers exemplifies Hirst’s creative process of imbuing seemingly mundane items from everyday life with historical, even religious, significance. Through its rendition in oil on canvas, the paracetamol is lifted out of the pharmaceutical case and transformed into a symbol for science’s promise to liberate us from pain and suffering.