Patrick Barkham loves watching butterflies zip along the hedgerows. So
how would he feel seeing them live and die as exhibits in Damien Hirst's
Tate Modern retrospective?
Butterflies made Damien Hirst's career and this is how he repays them: in a stark, white, windowless room in Tate Modern, hundreds of insects pull themselves from their pupae only to die there a few days later, surrounded by gawping tourists.
In Victorian times, butterfly collecting was a mainstream pursuit. Local people would rent their homes to enthusiastic collectors who would descend on butterfly hotspots – as if they were Wimbledon or the Olympics – during the flight season. Small boys would catch rarities and sell them to gentleman collectors for princely sums. Collecting was regarded as the perfect hobby for clergy – not as brutal as fox-hunting but still allowing for plentiful fresh air – and Victorian drawing rooms were brightened with mahogany drawers stuffed with rows of pinned, dead butterflies. Hirst's other butterfly art on display in the Tate, paintings that feature great collages of real butterfly wings, is more directly inspired by this rich heritage.
Dead butterflies may look macabre when two-thirds of Britain's 59 butterfly species are in decline. Butterfly collecting is frowned upon today and it is illegal to catch the rarer species, but the collectors discovered much about ecology and their hoards are still scientifically useful.
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