Cathedral, Palais Des Papes
Cathedral, Palais Des Papes
Signed Print
Damien Hirst
Screenprint, 2007
Signed Print Edition of 50
Critical Review
Taken from Damien Hirst’s 2007 Cathedral series, Cathedral, Palais Des Papes is a screen print that shows an intricate kaleidoscopic pattern made up of many varying butterfly wings. The print is depicted in an array of colours such as blue, yellow, purple, orange and red and the geometric composition is made up of concentric circles.
Evocative of stained glass windows in Gothic architecture, Cathedral, Palais Des Papas conflates the scientific with the aesthetic. Hirst uses the wings of butterflies to create the geometric pattern, appearing almost like insects on display in a natural history museum. The aesthetic comes into play in the creation of a beautiful pattern exuding a kinetic energy that is exciting and mesmerising to look at.
For Hirst, the butterfly is a ‘universal trigger’ that many people share in finding attractive and joyous. Recalling someone once saying to him: “Butterflies are beautiful, but it’s a shame they have disgusting hairy bodies in the middle,” Hirst in works like this chose only to display the dazzling wings in Cathedral, Palais Des Papes. Across the series, the butterfly wing is rendered unrecognisable when viewed at a distance and as part of a larger intricate pattern.
