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拍品专文
‘A photograph is from a moment. Painting is about stopping to look at the world, considering it, and giving it more importance.’ DAMIEN HIRST
Everes comyntas is a graceful Fact Painting of the eponymous butterfly (the English name is Eastern tailed-blue) by Damien Hirst. Although Hirst has consistently made Spot Paintings throughout his career, he moved away from the creation of sculptural artworks – such as the formaldehyde and vitrine pieces – in 2000, when he began creating photorealistic works from found images. With its astonishing attention to detail, illusionistic pictorial space and warm palette, Everes comyntas is a hyperrealistic interpretation of a high-resolution scientific photograph. The painting is underscored by its Latin name, which displays Hirst’s taxonomical approach to his subject. Whilst other ‘Fact Paintings’ depict pharmaceuticals, the gaunt expressions of drug addicts and gruesome surgical procedures, this work depicts the simple, natural beauty of a butterfly and flower. Simultaneously, with the work’s photorealistic reconstruction Hirst asks the viewer to challenge the truthfulness in disseminating appropriated and reproduced imagery. By blurring the boundaries between source and imitation, Hirst creates a convincing optical trick; as he explained in 2006, ‘I want you to believe in them in the same way as you believe in the ‘Medicine Cabinets’. I don’t want them to look clever, but to convince you’ (D. Hirst, quoted in ‘Interview with Damien Hirst’, Time Out, November 2006, https://www.timeout.com/ london/art/damien-hirst-interview-1 [accessed 24/08/17]).
Aptly, the joyous conviction of the work is reflected in the title of the series – ‘Love Paintings’. A gorgeous, technicolor series of diverse butterfly species, these paintings were the focal point of Hirst’s Forgotten Promises exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery, Hong Kong, in 2010. Butterflies are a key leitmotif in Hirst’s oeuvre; as Andrew Wilson has noted, ‘since Hirst’s 1991 solo exhibition In and Out of Love, he has used the butterfly, with its all-too-brief life, as a way of reflecting on the dilemma at the heart of existence… The butterfly’s life-cycle is one of regeneration and transformation, and in Hirst’s hands this symbol of love becomes a powerful means by which the certainty of death can be apprehended from the point of view of a celebration of life and thought’ (A. Wilson, ‘Believer’, in Damien Hirst, exh. cat., Tate Modern, 2012, p. 203). This ‘celebration’ reaches an ecstatic conclusion with the pure, unadulterated representation of the picture-perfect butterfly in Everes comyntas, a precious moment in nature, impeccably captured in an enrapturing medium.
Everes comyntas is a graceful Fact Painting of the eponymous butterfly (the English name is Eastern tailed-blue) by Damien Hirst. Although Hirst has consistently made Spot Paintings throughout his career, he moved away from the creation of sculptural artworks – such as the formaldehyde and vitrine pieces – in 2000, when he began creating photorealistic works from found images. With its astonishing attention to detail, illusionistic pictorial space and warm palette, Everes comyntas is a hyperrealistic interpretation of a high-resolution scientific photograph. The painting is underscored by its Latin name, which displays Hirst’s taxonomical approach to his subject. Whilst other ‘Fact Paintings’ depict pharmaceuticals, the gaunt expressions of drug addicts and gruesome surgical procedures, this work depicts the simple, natural beauty of a butterfly and flower. Simultaneously, with the work’s photorealistic reconstruction Hirst asks the viewer to challenge the truthfulness in disseminating appropriated and reproduced imagery. By blurring the boundaries between source and imitation, Hirst creates a convincing optical trick; as he explained in 2006, ‘I want you to believe in them in the same way as you believe in the ‘Medicine Cabinets’. I don’t want them to look clever, but to convince you’ (D. Hirst, quoted in ‘Interview with Damien Hirst’, Time Out, November 2006, https://www.timeout.com/ london/art/damien-hirst-interview-1 [accessed 24/08/17]).
Aptly, the joyous conviction of the work is reflected in the title of the series – ‘Love Paintings’. A gorgeous, technicolor series of diverse butterfly species, these paintings were the focal point of Hirst’s Forgotten Promises exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery, Hong Kong, in 2010. Butterflies are a key leitmotif in Hirst’s oeuvre; as Andrew Wilson has noted, ‘since Hirst’s 1991 solo exhibition In and Out of Love, he has used the butterfly, with its all-too-brief life, as a way of reflecting on the dilemma at the heart of existence… The butterfly’s life-cycle is one of regeneration and transformation, and in Hirst’s hands this symbol of love becomes a powerful means by which the certainty of death can be apprehended from the point of view of a celebration of life and thought’ (A. Wilson, ‘Believer’, in Damien Hirst, exh. cat., Tate Modern, 2012, p. 203). This ‘celebration’ reaches an ecstatic conclusion with the pure, unadulterated representation of the picture-perfect butterfly in Everes comyntas, a precious moment in nature, impeccably captured in an enrapturing medium.