Dome
Dome
Signed Print
Damien Hirst
Etching, 2009
Signed Print Edition of 59
H 119cm x W 116cm
Critical Review
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.
