The vibrant, iridescent wings of exotic butterflies are among Damien Hirst’s most enduring materials, recurring time and time again in his oeuvre as a symbol of the transience of life. A kaleidoscopic mosaic of these gem-like insects, Covenant, 2007, is exemplary of the artist’s iconic large-scale butterfly paintings. The image so compelled the artist—and epitomized his practice—that he took it up once again for an edition of screenprints six years later. With concentric circles unravelling like a Catholic prayer labyrinth, Covenant is a poignant meditation on ephemeral beauty and renewal. Indeed, according to Rod Mengham, “Hirst’s prolonged exploration of the life cycle of the butterfly, its spectacular visual appeal, the mythological and cultural formations it has inspired, and the variety of forms of response it has provoked in both artists and scientists, is one of the most thoroughgoing and many-sided conceptual projects sustained by any contemporary artist.”ⁱ

 

The employment of butterflies in Hirst’s practice can be traced all the way back to his first solo exhibition, the legendary In and Out of Love installation, 1991, held at a vacant commercial space near Anthony d’Offay Gallery, where the artist worked as a part-time technician.  Upstairs, butterflies hatched from pupae embedded in five white canvases, and spent the duration of the show mating, floating around, and laying new eggs; on view downstairs was a series of monochromatic paintings with dead butterflies pressed into the surfaces. The vivid and disconcerting image of these dead insects was so striking that a detail of one of these latter canvases was chosen for the cover of the pilot issue of Frieze magazine that same year. Inspired by a Victorian tea-tray in which butterflies were pressed under glass, Hirst returned to the motif for his Kaleidoscope series begun in the early 2000s, removing the insects’ bodies and arranging their wings into densely-patterned geometric compositions.

 

“My belief in art is a completely religious belief.”
—Damien Hirst

 

The many themes that these butterflies represent for Hirst—the transience of living beings, the inevitability of death, and the possibility of an afterlife—synergize with those explored by religion. In 2007, the year Covenant was executed, the artist began to turn more explicitly to the Christian iconography he exposed to in his youth. “I was Catholic until I was 12,” the artist recalled, “[and] I loved the imagery.”ⁱⁱ Deliberately drawing from the visual language of stained glass, the present work evokes the grandeur of medieval Christian cathedrals. This engagement with spirituality is furthered by its title: Covenant, referring to a sacred biblical agreement between God and a religious community, which plays a central role in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Also resonating beyond the Abrahamic religions, the work’s concentric shape is redolent of the intricate mandalas used in Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto, and Jain traditions to picture the cosmos.

 

 

Hirst’s intention behind Covenant was therefore not to invoke a specific religious practice, but to interrogate the complex relationship between art, death, and belief. Symbolizing the fragility of life, the radiant metamorphosis of the butterfly is cut short by its very brief lifespan, which typically amounts to only two weeks. However, the butterflies are a metaphor not only for mortality but also for remembrance: after their death, their beauty is forever preserved in his paintings. “The butterfly’s life-cycle is one of regeneration and transformation,” the curator Andrew Wilson asserted, “and in Hirst’s hands this symbol of love becomes a powerful means by which the certainty of death can be apprehended from the point of view of a celebration of life and thought.”ⁱⁱⁱ

 

 

ⁱ Rod Mengham, Mandalas, exh. cat., White Cube, London, 2020, p. 8.

ⁱⁱ Jonathan Jones, “Damien Hirst: ‘I was a Catholic until I was 12. I loved the imagery—the blood,” The Irish Times, Feb. 25, 2021, online.

ⁱⁱⁱ Andrew Wilson, “Believer,” in Damien Hirst, exh. cat., Tate Modern, London, 2012, p. 203.