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Lot Essay
"You need to find universal triggers, everyone's frightened of glass, everyone's frightened of sharks, everyone loves butterflies."
-- Damien Hirst quoted in R. Violette, ed., I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, With Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, London, 1997, p. 132.
In his revolutionary 1991 installation In and Out of Love, Damien Hirst transformed the interior of a London space from gallery to butterfly habitat; recreating the environment of a tropical rainforest, the Malaysian butterflies of the exhibit spent their entire lives within the confines of the gallery space, only to mature and die within Hirst's paintings. Since then, he has expanded upon the theme, creating works of mind-numbing complexity and beauty, utilizing the butterflies for their exotic look and inherent fragility.
The present work is one of the largest and most intricate of the butterfly paintings to date, containing at least 90 different species. Hirst's butterflies are embedded within the paint itself, which in turn calls attention to both the complex patterning of the butterflies' design and the all-over even tone of the common household gloss that is employed for the entire butterfly series. The sheen of the gloss and the shimmer of the butterfly is akin to the stained glass windows of Chartres or Notre Dame, and in this way they function as both window and barrier, seducing the viewer into the work but acting as a boundary to further inquisition. Traditionally a symbol of rebirth, throughout the Renaissance and treasured by cultures the world over for their rarity and beauty, the butterfly, from birth to death, is a precious object; ironically, their entrapment, which ultimately results in their death (as in the 1991 installation, also results in their preservation, ensuring their immortality, so to speak, within the canvas itself, for future generations. The work also speaks to Hirst's love of color and obsession with the dichomty of love and death, beauty and vulgarity, timelessness and mortality. For Hirst, the butterfly is a perfect symbol, capable of conveying the inherent oppositional forces that are the hallmark of his works.
-- Damien Hirst quoted in R. Violette, ed., I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, With Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, London, 1997, p. 132.
In his revolutionary 1991 installation In and Out of Love, Damien Hirst transformed the interior of a London space from gallery to butterfly habitat; recreating the environment of a tropical rainforest, the Malaysian butterflies of the exhibit spent their entire lives within the confines of the gallery space, only to mature and die within Hirst's paintings. Since then, he has expanded upon the theme, creating works of mind-numbing complexity and beauty, utilizing the butterflies for their exotic look and inherent fragility.
The present work is one of the largest and most intricate of the butterfly paintings to date, containing at least 90 different species. Hirst's butterflies are embedded within the paint itself, which in turn calls attention to both the complex patterning of the butterflies' design and the all-over even tone of the common household gloss that is employed for the entire butterfly series. The sheen of the gloss and the shimmer of the butterfly is akin to the stained glass windows of Chartres or Notre Dame, and in this way they function as both window and barrier, seducing the viewer into the work but acting as a boundary to further inquisition. Traditionally a symbol of rebirth, throughout the Renaissance and treasured by cultures the world over for their rarity and beauty, the butterfly, from birth to death, is a precious object; ironically, their entrapment, which ultimately results in their death (as in the 1991 installation, also results in their preservation, ensuring their immortality, so to speak, within the canvas itself, for future generations. The work also speaks to Hirst's love of color and obsession with the dichomty of love and death, beauty and vulgarity, timelessness and mortality. For Hirst, the butterfly is a perfect symbol, capable of conveying the inherent oppositional forces that are the hallmark of his works.