Psalm: Verba Mea Auribus, Psalm 5, the Psalm Series

Notes

Published by Other Criteria.

Damien Hirst is a leading figure in contemporary art, known for his provocative explorations of mortality, beauty, and belief. Born in Bristol and raised in Leeds, Hirst studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London, where he emerged as a central figure in the Young British Artists (YBAs) movement of the late 1980s and 1990s. His early fame was cemented by works such as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), a preserved shark suspended in formaldehyde, which challenged traditional boundaries between art, science, and spectacle.

The butterfly has become one of Hirst’s most enduring and symbolic motifs. His use of real butterflies began with In and Out of Love (1991), an installation in which live butterflies hatched, lived and died within a gallery space – an ephemeral cycle that highlighted the tension between beauty and decay. These themes carry through to The Psalm Paintings, a series within his larger Kaleidoscope body of work, conceived in 2001 after discovering a Victorian tea tray decorated with butterfly wings. The present lot, created in 2009, belongs to this series, which comprises 150 works titled after Old Testament Psalms. Psalm 5, referenced in this work, reads:

In these compositions, real butterfly wings are meticulously arranged into kaleidoscopic, symmetrical patterns on painted canvas, evoking the ornate geometry of Gothic stained glass windows and the spiritual symmetry of Buddhist mandalas. The butterfly, long associated with the soul and resurrection in Greek and Christian traditions, becomes both material and metaphor—an emblem of transformation, fragility, and the transcendent. As Robin Rile Fine Art notes, the Psalm series combines “the spiritual and the scientific, the beautiful and the grotesque, in a meditation on life and death.”¹

Hirst’s work spans painting, sculpture, and installation, often blurring the line between conceptual rigor and visual spectacle. His art is held in major international collections, including the British Museum, London; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D. C., and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

^1. Robin Rile (2019) Robin Rile Fine Art, Damien Hirst Butterflies: The Psalm Series, online, https://robinrile.com/damien-hirst-butterflies/, accessed 1 October 2025.