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Medium: Foil Block
Edition size: 55
Year: 2012
Size: H 86cm x W 71cm
Signed: Yes
Format: Signed Print
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Auction Date | Auction House | Location | Hammer Price | Return to Seller | Buyer Paid |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
February 2025 | Phillips New York | United States | |||
April 2024 | Phillips New York | United States | |||
November 2020 | Wright | United States | |||
November 2020 | Rago | United States | |||
November 2019 | Bonhams New York | United States |
Gold Tears is a mixed media from Damien Hirst’s Utopia series from 2012. The print shows an image of several rows of shiny diamonds on golden foil covered shelves in front of a mirrored backdrop. Depicted as a burning vision of golden light, the print symbolises the glorious eternity of diamonds that Hirst is so fascinated by.
Diamonds have featured in one of Hirst’s most enigmatic works, For The Love Of God from 2007 that is a sculpture of a skull entirely covered in diamonds. For Hirst, diamonds are the ultimate expression of positivity and perfection in the face of death. Gold Tears is indicative of this sentiment, notably in its title, making clear the ambiguity between eternal beauty and the melancholic realisation of loss inherent to eternity.
Gold Tears, as with other prints in the Utopia series, brings Hirst’s obsession with themes around death to the fore. This print in its unwavering glory and beauty points to the way that behind the shiny, glittery surface, there may be no meaning at all. Although different in subject matter to the depictions of pills in the series, Gold Tears similarly looks to themes of mortality, addiction and the human condition that make this print both complex and mysterious.
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.