The current in London by the British artist Damien Hirst has stirred the debate about the extent to which art and science inform each other. Among Hirst鈥檚 new works in Beyond Belief is a series of 鈥渂iopsy鈥� paintings, based on high-resolution images of different forms of cancer and other diseases.
The image on the left, selected by Hirst from the , is a coloured scanning electron micrograph of a biopsy from the intestine of a child with small bowel cancer. When printed at 9 centimetres wide, it provides a 45-fold magnification. Hirst鈥檚 painting based on this image, shown on the right, is 4.5 by 3 metres. It was made by printing an enlargement of the micrograph onto canvas, then overlaying sections of it with gloss paint and embedding glass fragments and surgical blades.
The idea, Hirst has suggested, is to create a juxtaposition between the aesthetic appeal of the paintings and the morbid nature of their subject matter. The big questions for me are whether Hirst鈥檚 paintings carry a greater impact than the micrographs, or deepen people鈥檚 understanding of the biological processes they depict. He readily acknowledges his appropriation of biological imagery: he has used the Science Photo Library reference numbers as titles for the paintings. But that鈥檚 as far as he takes the science: in the end, his art is driven more by aesthetic values. Does that matter? With the paintings priced from 拢350,000 to 拢1,000,000 each, his collectors clearly think not.
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