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An icon of Damien Hirst’s early career, I Love You stands among his first ever fully-realised butterfly paintings. Completed in 1995, it is one of twelve for which the artist was awarded the prestigious Prix Eliette von Karajan that year, shortly before his receipt of the Turner Prize. With examples held in institutions including the Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, this remarkable suite of paintings followed on from Hirst’s seminal installation In and Out of Love (1991). Executed in identical square formats, each with a different monochrome hue and unique arrangement of butterflies, the works presented at the Prix Eliette von Karajan closely mirrored those displayed in the downstairs room of the installation, which were subsequently acquired by the Yale Center for British Art. All bore titles relating to love: a central theme of the butterfly paintings, which represent expressions of hope, joy and eternal life. Here, against a lustrous red backdrop, the tiny winged creatures lie suspended in motion, their wings glinting like diamonds.
In and Out of Love was Hirst’s debut solo exhibition in London, and represented his most conceptual feat to date at the time. It was the first and last show held at the short-lived Woodstock Street Gallery, formerly home to a Mayfair travel agency. On the ground floor of the space, the artist constructed an artificial humid environment that served as a butterfly breeding ground. They hatched from pupae attached to the five white canvases that hung upon the walls, flew freely about the space, fed from bowls of sugared water, and then returned to settle on the plants that had been placed underneath the canvases. In the basement, the artist hung a suite of eight monochrome canvases with dead butterflies pressed into their radiant surfaces. The work, explained Hirst, was about ‘love and realism, dreams, ideals, symbols, life and death’ (D. Hirst in conversation with S. Calle, Internal Affairs, exh. cat. Institute of Contemporary Arts, London 1991, unpaged). It asked, quite simply, where the forces of existence gave way to the forces of art.
The works shown at the Prix Eliette von Karajan—a significant art prize awarded to figures including Peter Doig and Rachel Whiteread—represented the first major suite of butterfly paintings produced since the installation. ‘They are,’ wrote Norman Rosenthal in the catalogue, ‘like all Hirst’s work, executed with a precision of thought, a lack of pretension and ultimately a modern poetry that make him, with justice, one of the most discussed young artists of today’ (N. Rosenthal, ‘Damien Hirst’, in Prix Eliette von Karajan 95: Osterfestspiele Salzburg. Damien Hirst, exh. cat. Max Gandolph-Bibliothek, Salzburg 1995, p. 9). Unlike his later works, whose radial kaleidoscopic forms resembled stained glass windows, the early butterfly paintings spoke a language of near-Minimalist purity and elegance. In the present work, the delicate creatures seem to flutter across the surface, infused with playful poetry and movement. Hirst allowed chance to influence his placement of the creatures, creating an organic sense of spatial harmony. The entire spectacle sings with light, the rich red monochrome calling to mind the intense colour fields of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko.
The intersection of life, death and art lies at the very core of Hirst’s practice. From his notorious installation A Thousand Years (1990)—a precursor to In and Out of Love—to his formaldehyde tanks and medicine cabinets, he has consistently posited art as an antidote to mortality. The butterfly’s rich network of associations played directly into this thesis. As Friedrich Meschede explained in the exhibition catalogue, it is ‘taken to depict Eros and Psyche, the soul, who is portrayed in human form with butterfly wings. Regarding ancient grave symbolism, at death the soul left the body in the shape of a butterfly; the Christian viewpoint altered this image into the symbolism of resurrection’ (F. Meschede, ‘Neither Love nor Death, but Astonishment: In the Face of Both’, ibid., p. 39). The Latin term for the final stage of an insect’s metamorphosis, moreover, is imago, or ‘image’. Like love itself, the spectacle demands a leap of faith. Embalmed in their painterly tomb, the butterflies are spared from decay, and reborn as art.
In and Out of Love was Hirst’s debut solo exhibition in London, and represented his most conceptual feat to date at the time. It was the first and last show held at the short-lived Woodstock Street Gallery, formerly home to a Mayfair travel agency. On the ground floor of the space, the artist constructed an artificial humid environment that served as a butterfly breeding ground. They hatched from pupae attached to the five white canvases that hung upon the walls, flew freely about the space, fed from bowls of sugared water, and then returned to settle on the plants that had been placed underneath the canvases. In the basement, the artist hung a suite of eight monochrome canvases with dead butterflies pressed into their radiant surfaces. The work, explained Hirst, was about ‘love and realism, dreams, ideals, symbols, life and death’ (D. Hirst in conversation with S. Calle, Internal Affairs, exh. cat. Institute of Contemporary Arts, London 1991, unpaged). It asked, quite simply, where the forces of existence gave way to the forces of art.
The works shown at the Prix Eliette von Karajan—a significant art prize awarded to figures including Peter Doig and Rachel Whiteread—represented the first major suite of butterfly paintings produced since the installation. ‘They are,’ wrote Norman Rosenthal in the catalogue, ‘like all Hirst’s work, executed with a precision of thought, a lack of pretension and ultimately a modern poetry that make him, with justice, one of the most discussed young artists of today’ (N. Rosenthal, ‘Damien Hirst’, in Prix Eliette von Karajan 95: Osterfestspiele Salzburg. Damien Hirst, exh. cat. Max Gandolph-Bibliothek, Salzburg 1995, p. 9). Unlike his later works, whose radial kaleidoscopic forms resembled stained glass windows, the early butterfly paintings spoke a language of near-Minimalist purity and elegance. In the present work, the delicate creatures seem to flutter across the surface, infused with playful poetry and movement. Hirst allowed chance to influence his placement of the creatures, creating an organic sense of spatial harmony. The entire spectacle sings with light, the rich red monochrome calling to mind the intense colour fields of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko.
The intersection of life, death and art lies at the very core of Hirst’s practice. From his notorious installation A Thousand Years (1990)—a precursor to In and Out of Love—to his formaldehyde tanks and medicine cabinets, he has consistently posited art as an antidote to mortality. The butterfly’s rich network of associations played directly into this thesis. As Friedrich Meschede explained in the exhibition catalogue, it is ‘taken to depict Eros and Psyche, the soul, who is portrayed in human form with butterfly wings. Regarding ancient grave symbolism, at death the soul left the body in the shape of a butterfly; the Christian viewpoint altered this image into the symbolism of resurrection’ (F. Meschede, ‘Neither Love nor Death, but Astonishment: In the Face of Both’, ibid., p. 39). The Latin term for the final stage of an insect’s metamorphosis, moreover, is imago, or ‘image’. Like love itself, the spectacle demands a leap of faith. Embalmed in their painterly tomb, the butterflies are spared from decay, and reborn as art.