Provenance
Gagosian Gallery, New York
Catalogue Essay
You have to find universal triggers, everyone’s frightened of sharks, everyone loves butterflies.

DAMIEN HIRST

(Damien Hirst quoted in D. Hirst and G. Burn, I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now, London, 1997, p. 132)

The alpha male of contemporary British Art and one of the leading artists of his generation, the wide-ranging practice of Damien Hirst continues to challenge the boundaries between art, culture and science. Through his paintings, sculptures and installations, Hirst considers fundamental questions concerning the meaning of life and the fragility of biological existence. Confronting the viewer with the harsh reality of mortality, he “manages to be frank about death without sliding into morbidity. Going
even further than the most uncompromising painter of a vanitas still life, he presents the viewer with the incontrovertible reality of extinction” (R. Cork, “Injury Time,” The British Art Show 4 , 1995. p. 13). Nowhere is this practice more masterfully exemplified than in his Butterfly Painting series.

The present work is composed of two equal sized square canvases, each of which is covered with a layer of monotone household gloss paint in which actual butterflies are suspended. The canvas on the left is white, on the right blue, an oppositional relationship evocative of that which Hirst sees between black and white. As the artist himself explains, “I’ve always been interested in the split between mind and body, the one and the other, the difference between art and life, life and death, like black and white ... I think of life and death as black and white. If life is white, black is death. Trying to explain or imagine death is like trying to imagine black by only using white. There’s no way you can get to it, it’s like the same thing but opposite. This is life and death isn’t” (A. Dannatt, “Damien Hirst: Life’s like this, then it stops,” Flash Art, no.169, March-April 1993, p.63).

The opposition between light and dark, the vibrant life of the butterflies and the apparent reality of their death in this work yields a sense of tension. Combined with the title itself, Night Follows Day reiterates Hirst’s interest in the biological and aesthetic cycles of creation and destruction. In the artist’s own words, “I think I’ve got an obsession with death, but I think it’s like a celebration of life rather than something morbid. You can’t have one without the other” (D. Hirst and G. Burn, On the Way to Work, London, 2001, p. 21).
Artist Biography
Damien Hirst
British • 1965
There is no other contemporary artist as maverick to the art market as Damien Hirst. Foremost among the Young British Artists (YBAs), a group of provocative artists who graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London in the late 1980s, Hirst ascended to stardom by making objects that shocked and appalled, and that possessed conceptual depth in both profound and prankish ways.
Regarded as Britain's most notorious living artist, Hirst has studded human skulls in diamonds and submerged sharks, sheep and other dead animals in custom vitrines of formaldehyde. In tandem with Cheyenne Westphal, now Chairman of Phillips, Hirst controversially staged an entire exhibition directly for auction with 2008's "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever," which collectively totalled £111 million ($198 million).
Hirst remains genre-defying and creates everything from sculpture, prints, works on paper and paintings to installation and objects. Another of his most celebrated series, the 'Pill Cabinets' present rows of intricate pills, cast individually in metal, plaster and resin, in sterilized glass and steel containers; Phillips New York showed the largest of these pieces ever exhibited in the United States, The Void, 2000, in May 2017.
View More Works

9

Damien Hirst

Night Follows Day

2007
Diptych: butterflies and household gloss on canvas.
Overall 102 1/2 x 174 in. (260.4 x 442 cm). Each canvas 71 3/4 x 71 3/4 in. (182.2 x 182.2 cm.)
First canvas signed, dated and indicated “’Night Follows Day’ Damien Hirst panel 1/2” on the reverse; second canvas titled, dated and indicated “’Dawn Harvest’ 2007 panel 2/2” on the reverse; each also signed “D. Hirst” and stamped on the stretcher bar.

Estimate
$1,200,000 - 1,800,000

Contemporary Art Part I

12 May 2011
New York

1
Jacob Kassay
Untitled
Estimate $60,000 - 80,000
Sold for $290,500
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2
Urs Fischer
Cup / Cigarettes / Skid
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $290,500
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3
Wade Guyton
Untitled
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $422,500
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4
Thomas Houseago
Untitled
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $98,500
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5
Albert Oehlen
Panza de Burro
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $506,500
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6
Glenn Brown
Filth
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,546,500
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7
Ed Ruscha
Inferno
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $2,210,500
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8
Andy Warhol
Liz #5 (Early Colored Liz)
Estimate On Request
Sold for $26,962,500
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9
Damien Hirst
Night Follows Day
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
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10
Mark Grotjahn
Untitled (White Butterfly)
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $422,500
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11
Christopher Wool
Untitled (F48)
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
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12
Cady Noland
SLA Group Shot # 4
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $722,500
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13
Cindy Sherman
Untitled Film Still #9
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
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14
Richard Prince
Wayward Nurse (Crashed)
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,562,500
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15
Christopher Wool
Untitled (P522)
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $902,500
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16
Lisa Yuskavage
Northview (Impressionist Jacket)
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,082,500
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17
Thomas Schütte
United Enemies
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,022,500
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18
Marlene Dumas
Evil Eye
Estimate $900,000 - 1,200,000
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19
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild
Estimate $3,000,000 - 4,000,000
Sold for $4,114,500
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20
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol
Third Eye
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $7,026,500
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21
Andy Warhol
Flowers
Estimate $8,000,000 - 12,000,000
Sold for $8,146,500
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22
Mark Rothko
Untitled (Red and Orange on Salmon)
Estimate $3,000,000 - 4,000,000
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23
Roy Lichtenstein
Still life with Mirror
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $6,578,500
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24
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (Lung)
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
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25
Andy Warhol
Mao (Mao 10)
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $4,002,500
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26
Alighiero Boetti
Mappa (planisphère)
Estimate $1,300,000 - 1,800,000
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27
Robert Indiana
LOVE
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $1,314,500
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28
George Condo
The Nudist Couple
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $842,500
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29
Andy Warhol
Witch
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,658,500
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30
Richard Prince
Untitled Joke Painting
Estimate $350,000 - 450,000
Sold for $782,500
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31
David Hockney
30 Sunflowers
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
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32
Georgia O'Keeffe
Yellow Jonquils IV
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
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33
Joan Mitchell
Gouise
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,874,500
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34
Ellsworth Kelly
Green White
Estimate $3,000,000 - 4,000,000
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35
Donald Judd
Untitled 90-3 Donaldson
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,098,500
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36
Robert Ryman
Summary
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $782,500
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37
Robert Morris
Untitled
Estimate $300,000 - 500,000
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38
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
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39
Richard Tuttle
Light Brown, Dark Brown
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
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40
Claes Oldenburg
SCREWARCH MODEL
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
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41
John Chamberlain
Popsicletoes
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $602,500
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42
Damien Hirst
Tranquility
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,202,500
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43
Cindy Sherman
Untitled #422
Estimate $300,000 - 500,000
Sold for $350,500
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44
Takashi Murakami
Magic Ball 2 (Nega)
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $842,500
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45
Andreas Gursky
Brasilia Plenarsaal II
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
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46
Ugo Rondinone
No. 339 Vierterjunizweitausendundvier
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $194,500
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47
This lot is no longer available.
48
Keith Haring
Untitled (Boxers)
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $362,500
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49
George Condo
The Housekeeper’s Diary
Estimate $200,000 - 250,000
Sold for $302,500
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50
Kelley Walker
Black Star Press
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $314,500
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51
Kelley Walker and Wade Guyton
Coconut Chandelier (# 25)
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $74,500
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Contemporary Art Part I

12 May 2011 New York

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Provenance

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

Damien Hirst

9

Damien Hirst

Night Follows Day

Contemporary Art Part I

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12 May 2011
New York