Provenance
Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles
Exhibited
Los Angeles, Gagosian Gallery, Damien Hirst: Superstition, 22 February–5 April 2007
Literature
M. Wilner, Damien Hirst: Superstition, London, 2007, p. 101 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
“ 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.” DAMIEN HIRST

The nature of existence is a preoccupation woven through Damien Hirst’s extraordinary body of work. Drawing on the natural world, most famously in works such as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), it is a preoccupation that he explores with wit, bravura and an inventive symbolism. His so-called butterfly paintings, of which Sad Steps – Life Fulfilled is a spectacular example, demonstrate well how Hirst’s art cleverly combines natural phenomena and the works and ambitions of man in the service of his themes religion, science and death, all the while subverting our expectations.

Sad Steps – Life Fulfilled was included in the internationally renowned exhibition ‘Superstition’ at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills in 2007. The exhibition consisted of a substantial collection of Hirst’s butterfly paintings, and marked an extension of the artist’s so-called Kaleidoscope series which had begun in 2003 (Hirst’s first butterfly painting was exhibited at the Woodstock Street Gallery’s ‘In & Out of Love’ exhibition in1991).

Hirst’s creation is not intended to simply remind us of the harsh reality of our eventual demise, but rather it is a subtle reference to the transience of existence. The ‘Sad Steps’ of the title is derived from a poem of that name by Philip Larkin in his 1974 collection High Windows. Larkin’s poetry is characterised by a certain fatality and despair in the face of life punctuated by the occasional moment of transcendence and hope (the ‘high windows’ of the collection’s title). As with much of Hirst’s work, Sad Steps – Life Fulfilled is intended as a visual metaphor for our own lives and for reflection: “I want to make artwork that makes people question their own lives, rather than give them any answers. Because answers always turn out to be wrong further down the line, but questions are exciting forever” (Damien Hirst, ‘Interview with Robert Ayers’, ARTINFO, 14 March2007).

The present lot consists of thousands of meticulously organised butterfly wings, arranged in vibrant layers. The viewer, as the artist no doubt intends, is seduced by the splendour and symbolic power of the painting. Each wing makes an individual contribution to the pulsating, symmetrical patterns which dance across the work’s intricate surface.
The rich diversity in shape, colour and size demonstrates the vast range of butterfly species used by Hirst when creating this monumental work. Yet the alarming nature of the work’s construction – thousands of dead butterflies glued to the surface – undermines the scale and beauty of the piece. Hirst’s insects are trapped forever in their geometric structure, simultaneously rendering both the beauty and cruelty of the natural world. The exquisite colours of the wings distracts us from the unsettling truth of the work’s making.

Sad Steps – Life Fulfilled mimics the shape, colour and design of stained glass windows. There is common ground too in the immense amount of detail and specialisation required of the craftsmanship to make Hirst’s butterfly paintings and stained glass windows. There was no doubt a spiritual aspect to the making of the medieval windows which were designed to be didactic as well as uplifting and it is evident that Hirst intended this reference to reverberate in his own modern secular work. Experiencing the visual impact of Sad Steps – Life Fulfilled, especially in the way that it was installed in the ‘Superstition’ exhibition, is intended by the artist to evoke the feeling of reverence and awe as when seeing the windows of Gothic cathedrals such as Chartres, Canterbury or Notre- Dame de Paris. Yet, of course, Hirst’s butterfly paintings are viewed on a gallery wall with artificial light, subverting the very response that the works evoke.

Sad Steps – Life Fulfilled is a highly complex work both in its construction and in its symbolism. Its beauty is in many ways a very modern one. It is breathtaking but it is also ironical, and it is easy to see how such works have made Hirst one of today’s most successful and important artists.
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.
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Ο19

Damien Hirst

Sad Steps – Life Fulfilled

2006
butterflies and household gloss on canvas
227.6 × 121.9 cm (89 5/8 × 47 7/8 in)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Damien Hirst “Life Fulfilled” 2006’ on the reverse.

Estimate
£500,000 - 700,000 ‡♠

Sold for £601,250

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10 October 2012
London

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Freischwimmer #84
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Happy Accidents, Happy Endings
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Dessau
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Untitled
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Untitled
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Christopher Wool
Untitled
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John Baldessari
Strobe Series/Futurist: Dog on Leash (for Balla)
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Robert Longo
Untitled (Long Tou)
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Sean Scully
Homo Duplex
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11
Louise Bourgeois
Nature Study
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12
Andy Warhol
Watches
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13
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol
GE Short Line & Reading
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14
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Big Joy
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15
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16
Andy Warhol
Mao Portfolio (set of 10)
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17
Richard Prince
Untitled (Girlfriend)
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18
George Condo
Daphnée
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19
Damien Hirst
Sad Steps – Life Fulfilled
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20
Andreas Gursky
Rimini
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21
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild
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22
Anselm Kiefer
Dein Haus ritt die finstere Welle
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Miquel Barceló
Sinonimies
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Richard Prince
Mumbai after Dark
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Enoc Pérez
Darlington Hotel, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico,
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Andreas Gursky
Hong Kong Stock Exchange (diptych)
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Robert Indiana
LOVE (Red faces Blue sides),
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Ugo Rondinone
DRITTERAPRILZWEITAUSENDUNDSIEBEN
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Raqib Shaw
Death, Beauty & Justice
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Yayoi Kusama
Galaxy Red A,B,C
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31
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Martin Kippenberger
S.Q.36/I.B.B.D. (Ich bin Besonders Doof)
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Bill Viola
Ablutions
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Margherita Manzelli
Mr. Grigio
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Nigel Cooke
Drift
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Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
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Ged Quinn
Things are Exactly as they Seem
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Contemporary Art Evening Sale

10 October 2012 London

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Provenance

Exhibited

Literature

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

Damien Hirst

Ο19

Damien Hirst

Sad Steps – Life Fulfilled

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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10 October 2012
London