“I obsess about death and mortality, especially my own. The things you obsess over are the things you make art about.”
– Damien Hirst

The provocateur of the 1990s YBA era, Damien Hirst is one of the most successful artists of our time. His work constantly explores the relationships between life, death, art, science, and consumerism. His creations are both tantalizingly beautiful and terrifying, continuously shocking the art world and invigorating the contemporary art debate.

“The Rose Window, Durham Cathedral” (2008) stands as one of Hirst’s monumental Butterfly-paintings, epitomizing his iconic series of work. Thousands of tropical butterfly wings are intricately incorporated, meticulously arranged with metallic paint on canvas to create the effect of a stained glass window. The result is an astonishingly symmetrical and vibrant circular mosaic, faithfully reproducing the medieval rose window found in Durham Cathedral.

These vivid canvases carry a profound symbol deeply rooted in art history — the butterfly as a representation of the soul, symbolizing the ephemeral nature of life’s beauty. By adorning them with colorful wings, diamonds, and precious stones, Hirst blends elegance and the glossy allure of Western consumer culture, which serves as a reflection of the delicate interplay between human mortality, consciousness, and beauty. The artwork encapsulates the tragedy and complexity of this connection, inviting contemplation and reflection.

“It’s about love and realism, dreams, ideals, symbols, life and death. This work presents a romanticized view of death, showing the beauty of the butterflies even after they have died”. – Damien Hirst

Modern medicine serves as a defining theme in Hirst’s work, and his renowned series of Medicine Cabinets exemplifies his exploration of the crossroads between art and life science. Physiology, pathology, natural history, and pharmacology become the focal points, as Hirst ingeniously employs their credibility and authority to shock viewers, compelling them to confront the fundamental aspects of existence. In “Something must break” (2008), the pharmaceutical supplies, meticulously arranged and encased behind glass, stand as a poignant tribute to society’s unwavering trust in the life-saving capabilities of scientific advancement while challenging the inevitability of death.

During his interview with art historian and curator Nicholas Serota, Hirst remembered the genesis of the series in 1989: “In the first twelve, I had arranged them in a similar manner to how I approach a painting. I spent a lot of time experimenting with their placement, and at some point, it felt as if I wasn’t even present when it all came together. It was a way for me to achieve that without being too forceful with the viewers. After all, you can’t keep creating paintings like Rauschenberg indefinitely.”

Hirst’s Spot Paintings have been a subject of controversy in the art world since the mid-1980s. “Tetrachloroauric acid” (2008) is a combination of colored dots arranged in a strict grid on the golden canvas. The organized pattern initially suggests order and structure, but upon closer examination, the viewer may perceive a sense of chaos. The artist himself attributes this effect to the absence of satisfactory color interaction.

When closely examining one of these paintings, a peculiar phenomenon occurs due to the lack of repeated colors, leading to a lack of harmony. Typically, we are accustomed to identifying and balancing chords of the same color with different chords of other colors to derive meaning from the artwork. However, in Hirst’s spot paintings, this harmonizing is deliberately missing, resulting in a subliminal sense of unease in each artwork. Despite this underlying unease, the vibrant colors exude a sense of joy that may overshadow the discomfort, making it difficult to fully grasp but still present in the overall experience of the artwork.

Throughout his immensely successful career, Hirst has created numerous iconic and inventive series over the past three decades, including “A Thousand Years”, featuring a vitrine containing a cow’s head, flies, and an Insect-O-Cutor; Butterfly paintings; ‘Spot’ and ‘Spin’ paintings, and his infamous series of animals preserved in formaldehyde. In 2007, Hirst unveiled one of his most controversial masterpieces, “For the Love of God”, a platinum-cast human skull studded with a staggering 8,601 diamonds.

The work by Damien Hirst has been a subject of major exhibitions in the world’s most prestigious art institutions, including Tate Gallery (London, UK), Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (New York, NY, USA), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Fondazione Prada (Milan, Italy), Israel Museum (Jerusalem, Israel), The Broad (Los Angeles, CA, USA).