Damien Hirst|New Beginnings

'New Beginnings' gives Hirst's best-known emblem of life and death the plainest possible setting: one butterfly, one colour, nothing else. Where his kaleidoscopes multiply wings into pattern, these prints isolate a single insect, so each sheet reads almost like a specimen laid on a coloured card. A photographic process The butterflies are polymer gravures, an intaglio method in which a photographic image is transferred to a light-sensitive plate and printed in ink. That is why the veins and scales of the wings appear in such fine detail. The colour ground is printed separately as a flat block. The sheet itself is smooth: the texture of the wings is reproduced from a photograph, not present. Starting again The title reads naturally against the butterfly's life cycle, from caterpillar to chrysalis to winged adult, a transformation Hirst has long used to suggest rebirth. The bright, almost celebratory grounds suit that reading, which presents each butterfly as a fresh start rather than a memento of death. At auction Prices for complete sets have climbed. In December 2022 Bonhams London sold a set numbered 6/55 for £38,100, fees included, against an estimate of £18,000 to £25,000; under two years before, a full set had fetched £30,240 at Phillips London. Single sheets sell well too: one reached £7,500 at Phillips in 2019, three times its low estimate. Before and after The set followed Memento (2008), where Paragon had printed Hirst's butterflies as large photogravures against black. 'New Beginnings' brought them down to a smaller sheet and swapped darkness for colour. Two years later Paragon published 'It's a Beautiful Day' (2013), a second set of six polymer gravure butterflies on the same scale.