Decorate Your Home With Damien Hirst Wallpaper
There’s a new way to show off your obsession with Damien Hirst: Line your walls with his work. The English artist just debuted a line of wallpaper through his retail store, Other Criteria. There are three repeating designs from which to choose.
One print, Entomology, is a version of Hirst’s 2009 work Nessus, a painting that features a kaleidoscopic view of colorful beetles and other insects. You know, just in case you want to live your life completely surrounded by bugs. (Beware: You might have some trouble spotting the actual insects inside your house.)
Another, called Pharmacy 2, is an update of wallpaper that Hirst created for Pharmacy, the London restaurant he opened with Matthew Freud in 1997. (The original wallpaper is now held by the Victoria and Albert Museum.) The same wallpaper currently decorates the interiors of Pharmacy 2, their new restaurant located within a London gallery. “The wallpaper reflects Hirst’s enduring interest in the power of pharmaceuticals,” according to Other Criteria, and features a repeating grid of prescription drugs with brand names, generic names, and dosages listed underneath each illustration.
The third is a take on Hirst’s 2010 painting Valley of Death, a glossy image of brown, black, dark blue, and green butterfly wings. There are few motifs more Damien-Hirst-y than butterflies—he famously attached butterfly pupae to canvases and installed them in a gallery for his first solo show in 1991, allowing the insects to hatch and fly around the room feeding on sugar water and flowers during the exhibition.
All the wallpapers are about $324 (£250) per 2.25-foot by 33-foot roll, which is pretty pricey for a wallpaper, but pretty cheap for a piece of art. Not that Hirst really needs your money. In 2013, he was named the wealthiest artist in the world.