Damien Hirst|The Dead

'The Dead' opened a run of foil block projects with the same two publishers, and it fixed the format they shared. The butterflies of 'The Souls' followed in 2010 on the same paper and in the same edition size, and the skulls of 'Death or Glory' in 2011. Each time, a single image is multiplied through colour rather than through the size of the edition. Foil instead of ink In foil block printing, a heated block presses a thin film of metallic or coloured foil onto the paper. The colour sits on the surface like a skin and reflects light, where ink would soak into the sheet. Hirst builds the skull from two foils, so a mirror-bright metal such as silver gloss or oriental gold meets a flat colour such as Westminster blue or raven black. The image itself measures about 41.5 x 30 cm, centred in wide margins. A plain title Hirst's other skulls of these years carry grand titles: 'For the Love of God', 'Victory over Death'. This portfolio is simply 'The Dead'. Seen beside the butterflies that followed, the title can be read as naming what the body leaves behind, where 'The Souls' names what was thought to leave it. Hirst made the link himself: "After 'The Dead' I had to do the butterflies." Before and after The skulls that came just before were dark or jewelled: the black photogravures of Memento (2008) and the diamond-dust prints of For The Love Of God. 'The Dead' strips the skull of both photographic depth and diamonds and turns it into a flat, bright emblem. A year later Hirst made The Souls to hang beside it.