On a Wing and a Prayer
Giovanni Aloi
Editor in Chief of Antennae Project
London Editor of
Whitehot Magazine
Lecturer in Visual Culture:
Goldsmiths University of London
Queen Mary University of London
The Open University
Tate Galleries
Christie's Education
Sotheby's Institute of Art
www.antennae.org.uk
www.whitehotmagazine.com
Damien Hirst, The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991
POWER/KNOWLED
GE
RELATIONSHIPS
GALLERIES
MUSEUMS
AUDIENCES
ART MARKETS
ART MAGAZINES
BOOK PUBLISHERS
CURATORS
COLLECTORS
ACADEMICS
GALLERIES
MUSEUMS
AUDIENCES
ART MARKETS
ART MAGAZINES
BOOK PUBLISHERS
CURATORS
COLLECTORS
ACADEMICS
=
VALIDATION OF
VISIBILITY OF
ANIMAL DEATH
IN ART
Damien Hirst, The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991
Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 15031506
Damien Hirst,
Detail of
butterfly wing
panting,
2007
Mat Collishaw,
Insecticide #14,
2010
ARTWORK AS
MANIFESTATION
OF
INTERMINGLING
DISCOURSES
MYTHOLOGY
Dosso Dossi, Jupiter Painting Butterflies with Mercury and Virtue, detail, 1522-24
Antonio Canova,
Cupid and
Psyche, detail,
1796
MYTHOLOGY
CHRISTIANITY
Workshop of Albrecht Düre,
The Madonna with the Iris,
1500-10
Workshop of Albrecht Düre, The Madonna with the Iris, (detail), 1500-10
Workshop of Albrecht Düre, The Madonna with the Iris, (detail), 1500-10
MYTHOLOGY
CHRISTIANITY
ART
Rachel Ruysch, A Still
with Flowers, Butterflies
and a Lizard in a Dell,
early 1700s
Laurens Craen,
Still Life with a
Swallowtail
Butterfly,
detail,
1653
MYTHOLOGY
CHRISTIANITY
ART
NATURAL
HISTORY
Thomas Moffet, Insectorum Sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum,
1634
MYTHOLOGY
CHRISTIANITY
ART
NATURAL
HISTORY
CAPITALISM
RE-EMERGENCE
OF BUTTERFLIES
IN
CONTEMPORARY
ART
LONG ARTISTIC
ABSENCE BEGAN
WITH THE
VICTORIAN
PERIOD…
Jan Davidsz Heem, Festoon
of Fruits and Flowers,
1670
…IT COINCIDED
WITH THE
COLLECTING OF
TROPICAL
SPECIMENS…
Arthur Twidle, from
Beautiful Butterflies of
the Tropics, London
R.T.S., 1920
…IT CONTINUED
THROUGH THE
RISE OF
PHOTOGRAPHY…
Example of b/w photography of butterflies which circulated until the 1970s
… AND THE
DRAMATIC
DWINDLING OF
BUTTERFLY
POPULATIONS
AROUND THE
WORLD.
Vogt, Moreno,
Countryman,
Butterflies in
Space Teacher’s
Guide,
2009
FLATTENING
OF NATURE
Damien Hirst, Detail of White Symphony in White Major, 2006
Mat Collishaw,
Insecticide #24,
2009
Piero Andrea Mattioli,
Pedacij Dioscoridis
Anazarbei de Medica
Materia,
1565
William Curtis, The Botanical Magazine, 1803
Herbarium, 17th century. PreLinnean herbarium, 1600. Plate:
Doronicum americanum lacinato
folio.
Ulisse Aldrovandi, De
Animalibus Insectis,
1602
Thomas Moffet, Insectorum Sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum, 1634
Laurens Craen,
Still Life with a
Swallowtail
Butterfly,
detail,
1653
Maria Sybilla Merian, coloured
copper engraving from
Metamorphosis Insectorum
Surinamensium, 1705
If one wishes to kill butterflies quickly, then one
must hold the point of a darning needle in a
flame, thus making it hot or glowing red, and
stick it into the butterfly. They die immediately
with no damage to their wings […].
(Merian in Neri : 2011, p. 161)
Maria Sybilla Merian, coloured
copper engraving from
Metamorphosis Insectorum
Surinamensium, 1705
Victorian Naturalists
Ernst Haeckel and
Nikolai Miklucho
Ulisse Aldrovandi, De
Animalibus Insectis,
1602
SYMMERTY AND
THE ACCIDENT
Mat Collishaw,
Insecticide #14,
2010
Damien Hirst, Detail of butterfly wing painting, 1990s
A Fibonacci spiral which approximates the golden section, using Fibonacci
sequence square sizes up to 34.
The Parthenon, Athens, 438 BC
Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 150
1506
Golden Section on wing patterning and body structure of a moth. From the
research of Md. Akhtaruzzaman and Amir A. Shafie, 2012
THE
SUBLIME
RUIN
[w]hen] music, as it were in a fit of desire for independence, seizes the
opportunity of a pause to free itself from the control of rhythm, to launch
out into the free imagination of an ornate cadenza, such a piece of music
divested of all rhythm is analogous to the ruin which is divested of
symmetry and which accordingly may be called, in the bold language of
witticism, a frozen cadenza.
(Schopenhauer : 1819, p.240-41)
Bartholomeus
Breenbergh, Idealised
view with Roman Ruins,
Sculpture and a Port,,
1620s
Mat Collishaw,
Insecticide #16,
2010
THE SUBLIME
ILLUMINATES THE
MORAL PHSYCHOLOGY
OF THE RATIONAL
ANIMAL
Pierre Patel, Landscape with Ruins and a Sheppard, 1645
Mat Collishaw,
Insecticide #15,
2009
Jan-Baptist Weenix,
Ancient Ruins, first half of
17th century
Damien Hirst, Detail of White Symphony in White Major, 2006
Caspar David Friedrich, The Abbey in Oakwood, 1810
JMW Turner, The Chancel and
Crossing of Tintern Abbey,
Looking Towards the East
Window, 1794
Damien Hirst,
Observation – The Crown
of Justice, butterflies and
household gloss paint,
2006
Damien Hirst, Devotion,
butterflies and household
gloss paint, 2003
WITNESSING THE
ACCIDENT’S
AFTERMATH
Damien Hirst, Rapture,
butterflies and household
gloss paint, 2003
What terrorizes us is not therefore just what we
see in front of us, but it is what we see in the
reflections of ourselves: the dramatic
contradictions involved in what it means to be
human and to be a human animal amongst
other animals.
Damien Hirst, It’s Great
to Be Alive, butterflies
and household gloss
paint, 2003
Damien Hirst, I Am Become Death, Shatterer of Worlds, butterflies and household
gloss paint, 2006
Damien Hirst, Black Sun,
flies and resin, 2004
Damien Hirst, Black Sun, flies and resin, 2004, detail
MYTHOLOGY
CHRISTIANITY
ART
NATURAL
HISTORY
CAPITALISM
If we find ourselves tangling with the sublime again
today, the reason for this might be our embrace within
a capitalist modernity whose form of capital has come
once more to bear uncanny resemblances to the
imperial, hyper-liquid and perplexingly spectral capital
of the eighteenth century.
(White : 2010)
NATURE AS LIMIT
TO HUMAN
POWER
Mat Collishaw,
Insecticide #28,
2012
A key aspect of the recent resurgence of the sublime as
a subject for study has undoubtedly been its relevance
as an aesthetic of terrible nature, at a moment when,
with growing fears about environmental catastrophe,
nature has reappeared as a limit to human power,
progress and wealth, something which even threatens to
destroy us.
(White : 2010)
On a Wing and a Prayer
Damien Hirst,
Detail of
butterfly wing
panting,
2007
Damien Hirst, Detail of butterfly wing painting