Books for Prep: Superstition

Published to accompany Damien Hirst’s exhibition of butterfly paintings at Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles in February 2007, Superstition is a visually stunning book that confirms Hirst’s reputation as one of the most significant visual thinkers of his generation. Using ‘High Windows’, the last published volume of poems by Philip Larkin, as a point of reference to focus on the business of death and love, the ‘baroque and lavish fractals’ of Hirst’s paintings have a direct and clear poetry of their own, making Superstition a grand and tender body of work: ‘Larkin would probably have seen straight away the point of Hirst’s butterflies, these most evanescent of nature’s creatures, trapped here in their thousands under glass, their bright day done yet glowing still in death.’ Superstition includes over 30 exquisite full colour plates of the butterfly paintings, as well as reproductions of details and installation shots, providing a curatorial insight into this magnificent body of paintings. In addition to the wonderfully rich plates Superstition reproduces 6 of Philip Larkin’s poems, a commentary by Richard Bradford, and an erudite introduction by John Banville: ‘Death informs our every aspiration, our every hope, and stands at the end of every turn we take, the iron gate that will open just for us. As someone has said of the novel, having a happy ending depends on where you stop.’