Damien Hirst

A gift from the artist to the present owner

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the pink is slightly brighter in the original. The catalogue illustration also fails to fully convey the iridescent nature of the butterfly wings. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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Butterflies were one of Hirst’s first and punctuate masterpieces throughout his career to date. For the artist, the brevity of a butterfly’s life, the way in which it almost magically appears to animate and the magnificent colour it brings to the world render it as nature’s ultimate symbol of love and beauty. As Hirst recalls: “I had butterflies in my bedroom… I got wooden frames and nylon mesh and I made a huge box in my bedroom” (Damien Hirst in conversation with Mirta D’Argenzio in: Exh. Cat., Naples, Museo Archelogico Nazionale, Damien Hirst, The Agony and the Ecstasy, Selected Works from 1989-2004, 2004, p. 78). The reason he kept these butterflies was for one of his earliest and most famous exhibitions, In & Out of Love of 1991. It featured a combination of butterfly paintings: adult specimens on coloured canvases, alongside pupae attached to white canvases. Bowls of sugar water allowed the pupae to feed and mate as the exhibition continued and the subsequent hatching and metamorphosis effectively served as a miniature illustration of the cycle of life and death – a theme of endless fascination for Hirst that manifests itself aptly in the present work.

The remarkable ability of a butterfly to remain beautiful even in death, has long been one of Hirst’s primary sources of artistic appeal: “I remember painting something white once to flies landing on it, thinking “Fuck!” but then thinking it was funny. This idea of an artist trying to make a monochrome and being fucked up by flies landing in the paint or something like that. Then you get the beauty of the butterfly, but it is actually something horrible. It is like the butterfly has flown around and died horribly in the paint. The death of an insect that still has this really optimistic beauty of a wonderful thing.” (Damien Hirst in conversation with Mirta D’Argenzio in: Ibid., p. 78).

Butcher’s Love is a work that was given by Damien Hirst to Martin Gilder – the artist’s butcher. Mr Gilder has worked closely with the artist since the turn of the millennium, supplying his studio with animal carcasses for some of the artist’s most celebrated series such as the Formaldehyde and Vitrine works.