Damien Hirst – Psalm: Beatus qui intelligit

Description

Damien Hirst, Psalm: Beatus qui intelligit is a silkscreen print with glaze made in 2016. This print is hand signed and numbered in black marker on the front by the artist. Published by Other Criteria, London with stamp on verso.

Psalm paintings are crafted from just two things: ordinary household paint and butterfly wings. The result is a series totalling 150 works, all marvellous and wholly hypnotic, kaleidoscopic geometry resembling Gothic stained glass windows. Damien Hirst named them after psalms from the Old Testament.

Hirst began using butterflies in his work as early as 1989. Describing the insect as a ‘universal trigger’, he has explained: “Everyone’s frightened of glass, everyone’s frightened of sharks, everyone loves butterflies.” The ‘Psalms’ form part of the ‘Kaleidoscope’ series, conceived by the artist in 2001 after he found a Victorian tea tray decorated with intricate patterns of butterfly wings. The works reference the spiritual symbolism of the butterfly, used by the Greeks to depict Psyche, the soul, and in Christian imagery to signify the resurrection. The perfect symmetry which characterises the ‘Psalms’ alludes to both the displays of light, colour and beauty as presented in Gothic stained glass windows, and the circular patterns of Buddhist mandalas. The paintings, which are rendered on uniformly-sized circular, square or diamond-shaped canvases, might variously be interpreted as explorations into the nature of beauty, religion, death and the fragility of life.