Cheery Cherry Blossoms

Damien Hirst at Fondation Cartier

I first learned of the artist Damien Hirst because of his Natural History series, animals in formaldehyde-filled tanks. (Figure 1) Which I thought was a very creepy concept. Although when I actually saw one of his sharks in formaldehyde, I remember being struck by how not creepy it actually looked. My daughter the photographer appreciates Hirst for his Spot Series. (Figure 2) Repetitive but not. Automated but not. Hand paint colored dots made to look as if they had been painted by a machine. There are now over 1000 Spot canvases, different sizes, various titles. My son the glass blower is not a fan because of Hirst’s butterfly series for which he used real butterfly wings and for which my son tells me he bred special butterflies to kill and mount. (Figure 3) When I saw the butterfly canvases I thought of those kaleidoscope paintings by the untrained artists whose hands were guided by the Spirit (which I wrote about here: The Spirit Made me do it.) (Figure 4) And when I read about Hirst’s butterfly series, sure enough, it’s called ‘Kaleidoscope’ and the paintings reference the symbolism of the butterfly, for both the ancient Greeks and Christians. The works also look like stained glass windows and some of the paintings are homages to actual extant windows.

Figure 1. Shark in Formaldehyde, Damien Hirst

Figure 2. Damien Hirst in front of one of his Spot paintings

Figure 3. Kaleidoscope painting, Damien Hirst

All of this by way of saying that nothing prepared me for the exhibition called Cherry Blossoms now at the Jean Nouvel designed Fondation Cartier on Boulevard Raspail. Huge, seriously huge, colorful, joyfully colorful. (Figure 5) Filled with thick pink and rose and red splats of pure pigment (Figure 6) with sometimes small, sometimes expansive sections of sky blue or tree bark brown. (Figure 7)

Figure 6. Cherry Blossom, detail, Damien Hirst

Figure 7. Cherry Blossom, detail with sky

The series was more or less completed in November 2020, after 3 years of work. And then lockdown happened and Hirst was given the gift of time. He said, “Lockdown’s been quite positive for me … because I managed to keep painting and I managed to get lost in it. I want viewers to get lost in my paintings too…..” For busy people, for creatives, obviously with financial security, like Damien Hirst, or David Hockney or Sarah Moon, lockdown was a gift of time. And none of them squandered it.

Although Hirst has been experimenting with color for a while now, it is probably safe to say that with Cherry Blossoms that exploration has met its triumphant epiphany. (Figure 8) According to Hirst “(t)he Cherry Blossoms are about beauty and life and death. They’re extreme—there’s something almost tacky about them. .… They’re decorative but taken from nature. They’re about .. the insane visual transience of beauty—a tree in full crazy blossom against a clear sky… They’re garish and messy and fragile and about me moving away from Minimalism …” (Figure 8, Figure 9)

Figure 9. Cherry Blossom and Damien Hirst

Hirst’s intention was always to paint canvases so big that the viewer would ‘kind of fall into them’. Initially he painted them as if the viewer was ‘looking up into a tree…. no gravity, just canopy.’ But then he started painting them as if the viewer was looking straight at the tree, so he started adding trunks. You can date the paintings that way - the early ones, without trunks, the later ones with them.

Hirst said, ‘I just want the Cherry Blossoms to be in your face. I want you to feel like you’re too close to them.’ And that pretty much sums up Hirst. Aggressive. In your face. But it is one thing to be, I want to say taunted, by animals floating in formaldehyde and quite another to be surrounded by huge paintings that remind you of the best Cherry Blossom festival you have ever attended.

Figure 10. Circus Sideshow (Parade de Cirque, 1889) Detail, Georges Seurat

In these paintings Georges Seurat meets Jackson Pollock. (Figure 10, Figure 11) Pointillism meets Action Painting. The paint is so thickly applied that you are as keenly aware of the process of applying paint to canvas as you are of the canvas itself. (Figure 12) There are so many saturated dots that if you get too close, it’s almost visual overload. But even so, with as much looking as I did, I wanted to look more and look longer. It was like bingeing on the best chocolate tart you have ever eaten and not feeling too full or the best glass of Sauterne or Monbazillac or Vin Santo that you have ever sipped and not feeling too tipsy. Seriously.

Figure 11. Jackson Pollock paint cans and painting

Figure 12. Damien Hirst, paint cans and painting

This series reminded me of David Hockney’s Ma Normandie. (Figure 13) In both exhibitions, I felt surrounded, enfolded, embraced. Cherry Blossoms is Damien Hirst’s first institutional exhibition in France and it is here until early next year. David Hockney’s Ma Normandie returns to Paris, this time to the Orangerie, in October. You really need to see both of them. Your spirit needs to experience both of them. They will do you a world of good. Promise.

Figure 13. Ma Normandie, David Hockney 2019

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