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Lot Essay
Originally displayed in Damien Hirst’s landmark restaurant Pharmacy, where it formed part of one of the most high-profile art installations of its kind, I Need You is a rare and historic example of the artist’s butterfly paintings. Ten tiny winged creatures are choreographed against an exquisite sky-blue backdrop, suspended in motion before the void. Executed in 1998, at the height of Hirst’s early celebrity, the work is one of just ten butterfly paintings that featured on the upper floor of the artist’s Notting Hill restaurant. There, it took its place alongside examples of his pharmaceutical cabinets, spot paintings and other bespoke pieces, together forming a permanent exhibition that represented his largest solo show to date at the time. Opening in 1998, Pharmacy became an icon of ‘Cool Britannia’, frequented by the likes of David Bowie and Kate Moss. It closed in 2003, and the present work has remained in the same private collection for the past two decades.
Hirst’s butterfly paintings lie at the core of his practice. They evolved from his seminal 1991 exhibition In and Out of Love: his first solo show in London. Held at Woodstock Street Gallery, the exhibition was spread across two floors. On the ground floor, Hirst created an artificial humid environment that he filled with live butterflies. They hatched from pupae attached to white canvases, fed upon sugar water, settled upon plants and flowers and flew freely about the room. In the basement, Hirst mounted eight brightly-coloured monochrome canvases, each with dead butterflies pressed into their glossy surfaces. This portion of the installation, which now resides in the Yale Center for British Art, shares much in common with the suite of paintings subsequently hung at Pharmacy. Each set features a similar rainbow palette of distinctive jewel-toned hues, ranging from orange, red and yellow to pink, green and blue. The present work’s celestial backdrop, evocative of a Tiepolo fresco, is particularly entrancing.
The butterfly paintings embody many of Hirst’s central dichotomies: the fragile balance between life and death, the transition from reality to art, the intersection of faith and science and the beauty of mortality. By 1998, his dark, witty confrontation with these themes had propelled him to international fame. His inclusion in Charles Saatchi’s epoch-defining exhibition Sensation at London’s Royal Academy of Arts the previous year followed hot on the heels of the 1995 Turner Prize, which Hirst had won with his ground-breaking formaldehyde tank Mother and Child Divided. Much like the latter, the butterfly paintings preserve their subjects after death. From the chaos and unpredictability of life comes sleek, near-minimalist abstraction, each creature frozen in a radiant monochrome tomb. In Pharmacy, these paintings formed an elegant, contemplative counterpoint to the pill cabinets that populated the ground floor: they were art’s antidote to death, rather than medicine’s. If Christian iconography had often postulated the butterfly as a symbol of resurrection, Hirst too plays God: here, his insects are spared from the abyss, and reborn as art.
Hirst’s butterfly paintings lie at the core of his practice. They evolved from his seminal 1991 exhibition In and Out of Love: his first solo show in London. Held at Woodstock Street Gallery, the exhibition was spread across two floors. On the ground floor, Hirst created an artificial humid environment that he filled with live butterflies. They hatched from pupae attached to white canvases, fed upon sugar water, settled upon plants and flowers and flew freely about the room. In the basement, Hirst mounted eight brightly-coloured monochrome canvases, each with dead butterflies pressed into their glossy surfaces. This portion of the installation, which now resides in the Yale Center for British Art, shares much in common with the suite of paintings subsequently hung at Pharmacy. Each set features a similar rainbow palette of distinctive jewel-toned hues, ranging from orange, red and yellow to pink, green and blue. The present work’s celestial backdrop, evocative of a Tiepolo fresco, is particularly entrancing.
The butterfly paintings embody many of Hirst’s central dichotomies: the fragile balance between life and death, the transition from reality to art, the intersection of faith and science and the beauty of mortality. By 1998, his dark, witty confrontation with these themes had propelled him to international fame. His inclusion in Charles Saatchi’s epoch-defining exhibition Sensation at London’s Royal Academy of Arts the previous year followed hot on the heels of the 1995 Turner Prize, which Hirst had won with his ground-breaking formaldehyde tank Mother and Child Divided. Much like the latter, the butterfly paintings preserve their subjects after death. From the chaos and unpredictability of life comes sleek, near-minimalist abstraction, each creature frozen in a radiant monochrome tomb. In Pharmacy, these paintings formed an elegant, contemplative counterpoint to the pill cabinets that populated the ground floor: they were art’s antidote to death, rather than medicine’s. If Christian iconography had often postulated the butterfly as a symbol of resurrection, Hirst too plays God: here, his insects are spared from the abyss, and reborn as art.