Damien Hirst: Cerisiers en fleurs: Damien Hirst: Cherry Blossoms, French Edition

Incandescent and celebratory paintings of cherry blossoms from Damien Hirst, in a glorious oversize volume with 18 gatefold spreads

With 107 works, Cherry Blossoms marks a new chapter in Damien Hirst’s career-long exploration of the physical relationship between artist and canvas that began with his Spot Paintings in 1986. Hirst describes his cherry blossoms as “garish and messy and fragile”; the series signals a shift in Hirst’s career away from minimalism and “the imagined mechanical painter” toward a painting that delights in the potential haphazardness of the medium, as well as the artist’s own fallibility as a creator. Using a conceptual approach, Hirst explores questions of beauty, color and excess in these paintings. Rich in color and striking in number, Hirst’s Cherry Blossoms are both an appropriation and a tribute to the pictorial art of the 19th and 20th centuries. Presented at the Fondation Cartier in Paris in 2021, Cherry Blossoms was Damien Hirst’s first museum exhibition in France.