No Love Lost: Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst

The Wallace Collection and Damien Hirst may seem like an unusual pairing at first. The Wallace - better known for its fine collection of old masters and 18th-century paintings by Boucher and Fragonard - is putting on a temporary exhibition of Hirst's latest works, The Blue Paintings. The exhibition makes Hirst one of the few living artists to be shown at the Wallace Collection. Turning away from the headline-grabbing multi-million-pound diamond-encrusted skull seen at his last White Cube show, Hirst returns to painting for this series of 25 canvases created between 2006 and 2008. That's not to say that skulls don't feature. But here they are given a more ghostly appearance and respectful treatment than the blinging diamonds. In 'Floating Skull' for example, only the top of the skull is seen emerging from the blue/black abyss. Hirst considers these works to be "deeply connected to the past". In this setting, surrounded by the old masters of the Wallace Collection, they can be viewed as the latest installment in the history of painting.