On a Wing and a Prayer Giovanni Aloi Editor in Chief of Antennae Project London Editor of Whitehot Magazine Lecturer in Visual Culture: Goldsmiths University
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On a Wing and a Prayer Giovanni Aloi Editor in Chief of Antennae Project London Editor of Whitehot Magazine Lecturer in Visual Culture: Goldsmiths University of London Queen Mary University of London The Open University Tate Galleries Christie's Education Sotheby's Institute of Art www.antennae.org.uk www.whitehotmagazine.com
Thomas Moffet, Insectorum Sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum, 1634
Laurens Craen, Still Life with a Swallowtail Butterfly, detail, 1653
Maria Sybilla Merian, coloured copper engraving from Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, 1705
If one wishes to kill butterflies quickly, then one must hold the point of a darning needle in a flame, thus making it hot or glowing red, and stick it into the butterfly. They die immediately with no damage to their wings […]. (Merian in Neri : 2011, p. 161)
Maria Sybilla Merian, coloured copper engraving from
Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, 1705
Victorian Naturalists Ernst Haeckel and
Nikolai Miklucho
Ulisse Aldrovandi, De Animalibus Insectis, 1602
SYMMERTY AND THE ACCIDENT
Mat Collishaw, Insecticide #14, 2010
Damien Hirst, Detail of butterfly wing painting, 1990s
A Fibonacci spiral which approximates the golden section, using Fibonacci sequence square sizes up to 34.
The Parthenon, Athens, 438 BC
Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503-1506
Golden Section on wing patterning and body structure of a moth. From the research of Md. Akhtaruzzaman and Amir A. Shafie, 2012
THE SUBLIME
RUIN
[w]hen] music, as it were in a fit of desire for independence, seizes the opportunity of a pause to free itself from the control of rhythm, to launch out into the free imagination of an ornate cadenza, such a piece of music divested of all rhythm is analogous to the ruin which is divested of symmetry and which accordingly may be called, in the bold language of witticism, a frozen cadenza.
(Schopenhauer : 1819, p.240-41)
Bartholomeus Breenbergh, Idealised view with Roman Ruins, Sculpture and a Port,, 1620s
Mat Collishaw, Insecticide #16,
2010
THE SUBLIME ILLUMINATES THE MORAL PHSYCHOLOGY OF THE RATIONAL ANIMAL
Pierre Patel, Landscape with Ruins and a Sheppard, 1645
Mat Collishaw, Insecticide #15, 2009
Jan-Baptist Weenix, Ancient Ruins, first half of 17th century
Damien Hirst, Detail of White Symphony in White Major, 2006
Caspar David Friedrich, The Abbey in Oakwood, 1810
JMW Turner, The Chancel and Crossing of Tintern Abbey, Looking Towards the East
Window, 1794
Damien Hirst, Observation – The
Crown of Justice, butterflies and
household gloss paint, 2006
Damien Hirst, Devotion, butterflies and household gloss paint, 2003
WITNESSING THE ACCIDENT’S
AFTERMATH
Damien Hirst, Rapture, butterflies
and household gloss paint, 2003
What terrorizes us is not therefore just what we see in front of us, but it is what we see in the reflections of ourselves: the dramatic contradictions involved in what it means to be human and to be a human animal amongst other animals.
Damien Hirst, It’s Great to Be Alive, butterflies and household gloss paint, 2003
Damien Hirst, I Am Become Death, Shatterer of Worlds, butterflies and household gloss paint, 2006
Damien Hirst, Black Sun, flies and resin,
2004
Damien Hirst, Black Sun, flies and resin, 2004, detail
MYTHOLOGYCHRISTIANITY
ARTNATURAL HISTORY
CAPITALISM
If we find ourselves tangling with the sublime again today, the reason for this might be our embrace within a capitalist modernity whose form of capital has come once more to bear uncanny resemblances to the imperial, hyper-liquid and perplexingly spectral capital of the eighteenth century.
(White : 2010)
NATURE AS LIMIT TO
HUMAN POWER
Mat Collishaw, Insecticide #28, 2012
A key aspect of the recent resurgence of the sublime as a subject for study has undoubtedly been its relevance as an aesthetic of terrible nature, at a moment when, with growing fears about environmental catastrophe, nature has reappeared as a limit to human power, progress and wealth, something which even threatens to destroy us.
(White : 2010)
On a Wing and a PrayerOn a Wing and a Prayer
Damien Hirst, Detail of butterfly wing panting, 2007