Lot 400
400
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VA… Read more
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)

Clean Life

Details
Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
Clean Life
gloss household paint and butterflies on canvas
24 x 24in. (61 x 61cm.)
Executed in 2000
Provenance
Science Ltd., London.
Anon. sale, Christie's London, 23 October 2005, lot 125.
Special Notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis. Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Lot Essay

"I want it to look like an artist's studio ... I remember painting something white once and 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 a 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. I remember thinking about that. They don't rot like humans" (D. Hirst, quoted in Damien Hirst, exh. cat., Naples, 2004, p. 83).

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