Hirst is keenly aware of the value inherent within his signature. His spot paintings and prints are in the artist’s words, “almost like a logo of an idea of myself as an artist. Some sort of sculptural consumerist idea.” As a logo, the spots can conjure a range of associations with Hirst—namely hip, edgy, cool youth culture. Because the spots are so easily reproducible and adaptable, they are able to attach to a multitude of hosts, embedding themselves in cultural space and promoting the Hirst brand. They appear on the Tate shuttle boat, adorning a singer on “Top of the Pops”, and even a Mini.

About the only work Hirst does on his spots is name them. The colors are picked at random by his assistants and arranged in a grid pattern. The negative space equals the diameter of the spots, imposing order on the random choice of colors. The artist explains the source of inspiration for his series of spot paintings: “The aim is to set up a kind of visual humming… they represent the ultimate variety of life… and are random attempts to communicate within a rigid system.” He has also said the spots were inspired by commercial drug firm catalogues. Hirst gives these pharmaceutical names like Apotryptophanase, connecting them with one of Hirst’s most famous installations, Pharmacy. Hirst has long held an interest in medicine – his company is called Science and he opened a restaurant in Notting Hill called Pharmacy. For Hirst medicine is much like art in that it provides a belief system which is just as seductive as it is futile. In the end, we all end up dead.

Certainly last year’s exhibition at the White Cube gallery in London, Beyond Belief caused international headlines with the sale of the artist’s most notorious work - a glittering pave diamond skull aptly titled, For the Love of God (2007) that fetched a staggering £50 million (over $100 million), the most expensive piece of art ever made! An interesting sidebar – the reported cost of making the piece (executed by London Jewelers Bently and Skinner) out of 8,500 flawless diamonds encrusted into a platinum cast of a human skull was apparently around $20 million. What makes up the difference is the premium brand name of the artist and the idea.

The idea of the juxtaposing diamonds – exemplifying permanence (”diamonds are forever”) and a skull – a traditional momento mori (“Remember that you will die”) puts a new “luxury goods spin” on the old-fashioned still life painting style called Vanitas, made popular by Baroque artists of the 16^th century! Vanitas, Latin for “emptiness” refers to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the futility of pleasure. In traditional Vanitas paintings, skulls were used along with a sumptuous arrangement of fruit and flowers and occasionally an assortment of dead game animals. Look closely and you see that some of the luscious fruits are rotting, and flies are crawling on the table.

When we recall an early work of Hirst that initially brought him to the attention of the public and power collector Charles Saatchi – a dead shark floating in a tank of formaldehyde (now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) – it is apparent that Hirst has been brilliant in finding a strategy of reinvigorating thread-bare ideas of art-making (with a dash of irony) for some time. But not only does Hirst reinvent old ideas - like Warhol, he replicates them, creating a signature or “brand.”

Hirst’s latest “branded” idea – diamond skull silkscreens – recall Warhol’s diamond dust shoe paintings and prints as well as Warhol’s skulls. Warhol’s shoe becomes Hirst’s skull, floating across a celestial void of sparkling black background. Hirst’s diamond skull silkscreens, in editions of 250, were selling at a fast clip at the Miami-Basel art fair for £10,000 ($20,000) each!

Hirst is laughing all the way to the bank. A few years ago, he starting buying up fake Picasso prints on ebay and signing them, thus making them into real Hirsts with monetary value just by virtue of his signature. A parallel could be drawn with Warhol, who started “making money” literally – by painting dollar signs on canvases and prints which he sold for money!

To be continued…