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Lot Essay
Created in 2008, Ulysses by Damien Hirst is a striking meditation on life and beauty. Within the monumental, round canvas, vibrant blue butterflies form concentric circles, together suggesting an infinite, unfolding expanse. Although the work stems from the artist’s Kaleidoscope series—initiated in 2001 and inspired by a Victorian tea tray decorated with butterfly wings—Hirst has employed butterflies in his practice for more than three decades, most famously in his 1991 solo debut In and Out of Love at London’s Woodstock Gallery. In this installation, butterflies emerged from pupae which had been previously affixed to painted canvases. As Hirst explained, he was interested in ‘the death of an insect that still has this really optimistic beautify of a wonderful thing’ (D. Hirst, quoted in Damien Hirst: The Agony and the Ecstasy, exh. cat. Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples 2004, p. 83). Whereas In and Out of Love witnessed the butterfly’s entire lifecycle, trapped as they were within the gallery’s walls, in Ulysses, the creatures have been caught in a state of pure majesty.
For Hirst, who is fascinated by the overlap of art and science, aesthetics and mortality, the butterfly holds particular appeal. He kept several in his bedroom in the run up to the opening of In and Out of Love. Hirst’s attraction to the creature lies in its layered and multifarious evocations. Across centuries and cultures, the butterfly has symbolised transformation, beauty, and precarity; to Christians, the resurrection; to the ancient Greeks, the soul. Within art history, these creatures were often depicted in vanitas paintings, a particular mode of the still life genre that comments on the ephemerality and transience of human life, and rose in popularity during the Dutch Golden Age. Hirst’s enduring preoccupation with death places much of his oeuvre within this long tradition. Indeed, ‘the sensation or thrill of physical vulnerability’ is one proposed by vanitas paintings and acutely felt in Ulysses (B. Dillon, ‘Ugly Feelings’, in Damien Hirst, exh. cat. Tate Modern, London 2012, p. 28). The work’s deep blue surface, notably, conjures the otherworldly azure of Hirst’s celebrated formaldehyde tanks, which engaged with similar themes, as well as invoking the dazzling, opulent interiors of mosques and other Middle Eastern architecture.
Just as many of the artists who painted skulls and decaying fruit hoped to remind their viewers of the fleetingness of life, so too do Hirst’s butterflies suggest a corporeal insubstantiality. These are fragile beings, a sense built into their gossamer physiological makeup. Yet far from despairing or bleak, Ulysses instead reveals a determined hope, conjured in the implication of stained glass tracery formed by the butterflies’ black bodies. This is further underscored by the work’s title. Though ‘Ulysses’ refers to the species of blue butterfly used here, it also recalls the great Homeric epic that follows the Greek hero and King of Ithaca, Odysseus, on his ten-year journey home, as well as James Joyce’s modern retelling of the story. Hirst, significantly, was beginning to plan ideas for his own great odyssey, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, during this period. As Francesco Bonami has written, ‘Hirst’s question is: if art can be the answer to both life and death … then the existence of art is perhaps a good reason enough to venture into our lives as The Hero of our own stories, in order to understand a greater narrative behind and beyond us’ (F. Bonami, ‘Supernatural Aid: Hirst’s Travels’, in Damien Hirst: Relics, exh. cat. Al Riwaq Gallery, Doha 2013, p. 17). Arrested within the tondo, Hirst’s butterflies sing with life, light and possibility.
For Hirst, who is fascinated by the overlap of art and science, aesthetics and mortality, the butterfly holds particular appeal. He kept several in his bedroom in the run up to the opening of In and Out of Love. Hirst’s attraction to the creature lies in its layered and multifarious evocations. Across centuries and cultures, the butterfly has symbolised transformation, beauty, and precarity; to Christians, the resurrection; to the ancient Greeks, the soul. Within art history, these creatures were often depicted in vanitas paintings, a particular mode of the still life genre that comments on the ephemerality and transience of human life, and rose in popularity during the Dutch Golden Age. Hirst’s enduring preoccupation with death places much of his oeuvre within this long tradition. Indeed, ‘the sensation or thrill of physical vulnerability’ is one proposed by vanitas paintings and acutely felt in Ulysses (B. Dillon, ‘Ugly Feelings’, in Damien Hirst, exh. cat. Tate Modern, London 2012, p. 28). The work’s deep blue surface, notably, conjures the otherworldly azure of Hirst’s celebrated formaldehyde tanks, which engaged with similar themes, as well as invoking the dazzling, opulent interiors of mosques and other Middle Eastern architecture.
Just as many of the artists who painted skulls and decaying fruit hoped to remind their viewers of the fleetingness of life, so too do Hirst’s butterflies suggest a corporeal insubstantiality. These are fragile beings, a sense built into their gossamer physiological makeup. Yet far from despairing or bleak, Ulysses instead reveals a determined hope, conjured in the implication of stained glass tracery formed by the butterflies’ black bodies. This is further underscored by the work’s title. Though ‘Ulysses’ refers to the species of blue butterfly used here, it also recalls the great Homeric epic that follows the Greek hero and King of Ithaca, Odysseus, on his ten-year journey home, as well as James Joyce’s modern retelling of the story. Hirst, significantly, was beginning to plan ideas for his own great odyssey, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, during this period. As Francesco Bonami has written, ‘Hirst’s question is: if art can be the answer to both life and death … then the existence of art is perhaps a good reason enough to venture into our lives as The Hero of our own stories, in order to understand a greater narrative behind and beyond us’ (F. Bonami, ‘Supernatural Aid: Hirst’s Travels’, in Damien Hirst: Relics, exh. cat. Al Riwaq Gallery, Doha 2013, p. 17). Arrested within the tondo, Hirst’s butterflies sing with life, light and possibility.