HENI is delighted to present The Beautiful Paintings, the revolutionary new artwork from Damien Hirst that blurs the boundaries between digital and physical art creation using generative and machine learning algorithms.
Marking the newest iteration of Hirst’s iconic Spin Paintings series, known for their energetic splashes of colour, The Beautiful Paintings gives collectors the opportunity to choose their own combination of colours, styles, shapes, sizes, and mediums to generate unique artworks and titles .
Collectors have the option to generate the artwork either as a physical artwork, digital artwork (NFT), or both. The physical artworks are printed on canvas and are available in two shapes and four sizes. Each artwork in the series is unique and the physical artworks will be hand-signed with a paint pen on the front by Damien Hirst.
The Beautiful Paintings are available for a limited time only, from 31 March to 10 April.
Example of Bursting River Spin Style
SPIN PAINTING HISTORY
Tracing its roots back to 1992, ‘Spin Paintings’ was Hirst’s reaction to Abstract Expressionism and his desire to devise a machine to make art, based on his idea that one could mechanically create ‘a clinical system’ to produce ‘art without angst’. Rather than creating a composition directly through his brush, Hirst began pouring pigments onto his canvases as they spun, allowing the machine to facilitate chance movements and colour interactions.
Over the past 30 years, Hirst has continued to return to the spin format, sometimes even inviting other people such as David Bowie to his studio to create a ‘Spin Painting’ together. He has used various shapes, sizes and techniques to build on this body of work, with The Beautiful Paintings being the latest iteration. Generative and machine learning algorithms replace Hirst’s mechanical tools but preserve the series’ long-standing aesthetic of chance and randomness.
CONFIGURE YOUR OWN
Using The Beautiful Paintings dashboard, Hirst gives collectors the opportunity to choose their own combination of colours, styles, shapes, sizes, and mediums to generate artworks and titles. Although collectors can select these variables, the final output always has an element of randomness, just as in past ‘Spin Paintings’. Each artwork in this series will be unique.
Collectors can also select the canvas shape of their generated artwork. Works can be produced in a square or circular format, two of the most common shapes already used by Hirst in his ‘Spin Paintings’ series, each of which are available in four different sizes.
The Beautiful Paintings dashboard features 25 different artwork styles to choose from. The wide variety of styles show the unexpected movements, paint splatters, and colour interactions of his traditional ‘Spin Paintings’, but also explore new directions that build on his previous body of work.
The optional ‘Blur’ functionality can be applied in combination with any style to emphasise the motion of different paint splashes radiating out from the centre of the canvas as it spins.
Collectors can also select the canvas shape of their generated artwork. Works can be produced in a square or circular format, two of the most common shapes already used by Hirst in his ‘Spin Paintings’ series, both of which are available in four different sizes.
Finally, machine learning is used to create playfully long and descriptive titles, which follow the existing naming convention for ‘Spin Paintings’. The titles start with the word ‘Beautiful’, end in ‘Painting’ and reference the chosen style of ‘Spin Painting’. Collectors can choose to regenerate a new title for the same artwork.
GENERATIVE ALGORITHM & MACHINE LEARNING
THE GENERATIVE ALGORITHM
Damien Hirst has been working closely with the HENI data science team for over a year to create a generative algorithm that digitally constructs artworks in 25 unique styles, developing and pushing the boundaries of what normal 'Spin Paintings' look like. The algorithm is written in p5.js, a JavaScript library, and is stored on-chain. A variety of techniques including WEBGL shaders, Perlin noise and trigonometric functions are used to create paint layers that mirror the defined yet unpredictable motion of paint as it moves across a canvas.
TITLES
To create the artwork titles, a modern transformer neural network model was trained on data that was curated from a dependency parser that interprets objects and forms description pairs derived from a large textual data input set. The model allows for a never-ending variety of new and unseen titles that follow the format of his existing ‘Spin Paintings’.
COLOUR NAMES
The expressive colour names that collectors can choose from in The Beautiful Paintings generator were created using machine learning models. A GPT model was fine-tuned using over 30,000 names in two colour spaces (CIELAB and RGB).
UPSCALING ALGORITHM
Before being printed as physical artworks, the generated artworks are upscaled to a resolution of 16K using a machine learning algorithm. A generative adversarial network was fine-tuned on a historical catalogue of more than 2,000 of Damien Hirst’s ‘Spin Paintings’ to upscale the artwork to a resolution of 16K, allowing the artwork to maintain intricate details and structure at a larger size.
FORMAT & MEDIUM
In a radical move to expand the limits of digital and physical art creation, The Beautiful Paintings collectors have the option to purchase an artwork either as a physical artwork, a digital artwork (NFT), or both.
The physical artworks are Giclée prints on poly-cotton artist canvas mounted on birch plywood stretchers. Each artwork is hand-signed in paint pen by Damien Hirst on the front. The physical artworks are available in two shapes and four sizes. The sizes of the circle canvas are: 23, 40, 70, and 100 cm in diameter. The square canvas is also available in the following sizes on each edge: 23, 40, 70 and 100 cm.
Collectors can choose to purchase The Beautiful Paintings as a digital artwork (NFT) available in either circle or square format. The Beautiful Paintings NFTs are minted on the Ethereum blockchain and adhere to the ERC-721 standard.
The canvases cost $1,500, $3,000, $4,500 and $6,000 depending on the size, plus any applicable taxes. The NFT costs $2,000 plus any applicable taxes.
HENI GALLERY
A selection of The Beautiful Paintings are on display at the HENI Gallery from 31th March until 10th April. Admission to the gallery is free, with no appointment required.
Damien Hirst – 'The Beautiful Paintings'
Series: H12
Physical Medium: Giclée print on poly-cotton artist canvas mounted on a birch plywood stretcher.
Digital Medium: NFT
Details: Physical artworks hand-signed on the front
Dimensions: The sizes of the circle canvas are: 23, 40, 70, and 100 cm in diameter. The sizes of the square canvas are: 23, 40, 70 and 100 cm on each edge.
Date: 2023
Frame: No
Edition Sizes:
X-Large Circle (H12-1): 1,463
Large Circle (H12-2): 606
Medium Circle (H12-3): 657
Small Circle (H12-4): 1,148
X-Large Square (H12-5): 473
Large Square (H12-6): 224
Medium Square (H12-7): 230
Small Square (H12-8): 308
Digital Artworks (NFTs): 399 (217 Circle, 182 Square)