In and Out of Love (Butterfly Paintings and Ashtrays)

Damien Hirst, born 1965, British, In and Out of Love (Butterfly Paintings and Ashtrays), 1991

Creator:: Damien Hirst, born 1965
Title:: In and Out of Love (Butterfly Paintings and Ashtrays)
Date:: 1991
Medium:: Eight paintings, household paint on canvas with butterflies; four boxes; one table, formica top on steel base; four glass ashtrays filled with cigarette butts
Dimensions:: 60 × 60 inches (152.4 × 152.4 cm), Overall: 36 × 36 × 36 inches (91.4 × 91.4 × 91.4 cm), Overall: 42 inches (106.7 cm)
Credit Line:: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
Copyright Status:: © The Artist
Accession Number:: B1997.2
Classification:: Sculptures
Collection:: Paintings and Sculpture
Subject Terms:: abstract art | ashtray | boxes | butterflies | cigarettes | installation | love | table
Access:: Not on view
Note: To make an appointment to see this work, please contact the Paintings and Sculpture department at ycba.paintings@yale.edu. Please visit the Paintings and Sculpture collections page on our website for more details.
Link:: https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:4908
Export:: XML
IIIF Manifest:: JSON

“It’s about love and realism, dreams, ideals, symbols, life and death. I worked out many possible trajectories for these things, like the way the real butterfly can destroy the ideal (birthday-card) kind of love; the symbol exists apart from the real thing. Or the butterflies still being beautiful even when dead. All these things are completely thrown off balance by a comparison I tried to make between art and life, in the upstairs and downstairs installations, a crazy thing to do when in the end it’s all art.” —Damien Hirst Between June 21 and July 26, 1991, visitors to the Woodstock Street Gallery (a former travel agency) experienced a two-floor installation. In the upstairs room, In and Out of Love (White Paintings and Live Butterflies), butterflies were hatched and lived on sugar water in an artificial humid environment until they died. The walls were lined with five monochrome primed canvases on which were attached pupae. Plants were placed below to attract the butterflies to settle back on each canvas after hatching. Downstairs, In and Out of Love (Butterfly Paintings and Ashtrays) featured eight paintings in bright pastel colors, each with dead butterflies pressed into their surfaces of high gloss paint. Along with the paintings was the table with four ashtrays loaded with cigarette butts and ash, redolent of the aftermath of a crowded private view. Four large cubes, each with a single hole in each side, were placed around the room. These cubes echoed ones recently seen in Hirst’s A Hundred Years (1990) and A Thousand Years (1990), vitrines in which maggots hatched into flies from inside similar cubes. By using an upstairs and a downstairs, Hirst created the entire life cycle of butterflies in the upstairs space and then made those butterflies into art downstairs.

Gallery label for Love, Life, Death, and Desire: An Installation of the Center's Collections (Yale Center for British Art, 2020-11-01 – 2021-02-28)

In 1991, for his first solo exhibition, Damien Hirst transformed a disused two-story travel agent on Woodstock Street in central London into his landmark installation In and Out of Love. The installation comprised two works. The first, named “In and Out of Love (White Paintings and Live Butterflies)”, consisted of a live ecosystem simulating a tropical environment, in which eight bare canvases, a table, radiators, and a number of potted plants, were displayed. Butterfly pupae were attached to the canvases and hatched during the course of the exhibition, leaving butterflies to fly freely around the room. Bowls of fruit and sugar water on the central table allowed the butterflies to subsist until they died. The second part of the work, “In and Out of Love (Butterfly Paintings and Ashtrays)”, was presented in the cooler atmosphere of the basement of the building. Eight monochrome paintings, with dead butterflies embedded in their surfaces, were presented alongside a series of cubes, and a table with overflowing ashtrays. The contrast between the two parts of the installation introduced the themes of transience and death that have since become the hallmarks of Hirst’s work.

The live ecosystem was dismantled after the exhibition ended, while the second part of the installation was preserved, and entered the Center’s collection in 1997. In spring 2012, on the occasion of Hirst’s retrospective at Tate Modern, London, the ecosystem was reconstructed, and the two parts of the installation were reunited for the first time since 1991.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2012

Love, Life, Death, and Desire: An Installation of the Center's Collections (Yale Center for British Art, 2020-10-01 - 2021-02-28) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Damien Hirst (Tate Modern, 2012-04-05 - 2012-09-09) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Revisiting Traditions [BAC 20th century painting & sculpture] (Yale Center for British Art, 2002-04-30 - 2005-05-18) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Public Offerings (The Museum of Contemporary Art and The Geffen Contemporary, 2001-04-01 - 2001-07-29) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

20th Century Paintings and Sculpture (Yale Center for British Art, 2000-01-27 - 2000-04-30) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

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