Name: Dome
Brand: Damien Hirst
Rating: 5 (236 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of Damien Hirst’s Dome (signed) is estimated to be worth between £13,000 and £20,000. This etching artwork, created in 2009, has an auction history of two sales since its entry to the market on 19th November 2016. The hammer price for this artwork is £0 and there is no data available for the average annual growth rate. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 59.

Meaning & Analysis

Dome is an etching from Damien Hirst’s Sanctum series from 2009 that shows a yellow butterfly in the centre of an intricate kaleidoscopic pattern created out of butterfly wings. The butterfly wings are depicted in various shades of blue, purple and pink and the geometric composition is made up of concentric circles.

Evocative of stained glass windows in Gothic architecture, Dome explores tensions between the scientific and the aesthetic. The wings used to create the geometric pattern appear like insects on display in a natural history museum. The aesthetic comes into play in the creation of a beautiful pattern exuding 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 Dome. Across the series, the butterfly wing is rendered unrecognisable when viewed at a distance and as part of a larger intricate pattern.