Damien Hirst is a British contemporary artist. He is well-known for his controversial artworks, like Mother and Child (Divided), which is pairs a cow and calf, each bisected in tanks of formaldehyde. This summer, he unveils his paintings on the natural beauty of cherry blossoms which have softer aesthetics but remains to convey strong messages of resistance.
Renewal Blossom, 2018. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2021. Picture © Prudence Cuming Associates. https://www.fondationcartier.com/
Cherry Blossoms depicts the colorful life of flowers in spring. In that landscape, hope and happiness grow together within the chaos, anxiety, and fall. Damien Hirst can precisely express the beautiful irony of cherry blossoms. His paintings were influenced by Pointillism, Impressionism, and Action Painting. Action Painting is mainly driven by spontaneous creation rather than careful application. Hirst covered the canvases with dense bright dots that make the viewer easily move from figurative to abstract paintings.
Damien Hirst, Spiritual Day Blossom, 2018. Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2021. Picture © Prudence Cuming Associates. https://www.fondationcartier.com/
For Hirst, The Cherry Blossoms is about beauty, life, and death. He said “They’re decorative but taken from nature. They’re about desire and how we process the things around us and what we turn them into, but also about the insane visual transience of beauty—a tree in full crazy blossom against a clear sky…They’re garish and messy and fragile…”.
Hirst created these paintings during his long period of lockdown, without his team of assistants. At that time, Hirst had an opportunity to dive into art in solitary aesthetic creation. In the beginning, he was anxious, but later he succeeded to turn his anxiety into positive paintings.
Cherry Blossoms tells a lot about the beauty and paradox of life. It also reminds us of how we can keep our positive thinking amid the chaos and terrible circumstances.
Damien Hirst’s Cherry Blossoms will be exhibited at the Cartier Foundation, France, from July 6, 2021 – January 22, 2022.
Damien Hirst’s “Cherry Blossoms”
