New Museum Exhibition: Cherry Blossoms by Damien Hirst’s

If you’re a blossom lover then this post is for you. Take a look at this museum exhibition that you can’t miss!

Cherry Blossoms is Damien Hirst’s first museum exhibition in France. The Cherry Blossoms series reinterprets, with playful irony, the traditional subject of landscape painting. Hirst combines thick brushstrokes and elements of gestural painting, referencing both Impressionism and Pointillism, as well as Action Painting.
The monumental canvases, which are entirely covered in dense bright colors, envelope the viewer in a vast floral landscape moving between figuration and abstraction.
The Cherry Blossoms are at once a subversion and homage to the great artistic movements of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They are integral to the pictorial exploration long carried out by Hirst.

Image Credit: Architectural Digest

Crafting the paintings over three years, including during the course of the pandemic, the artist aptly chose a theme to celebrate beauty in nature just as it was showing its most harrowing side: cherry blossoms in full bloom under a crisp blue sky, an image so perfect he declares it garish and almost tacky. With pieces named Renewal Blossom, Excitement Blossom, and even The Triumph of Death Blossom, the near-decorative subject matter is tinged with a gravitas—and with it, a bit of Hirst’s signature irony.

Image Credit: Fondation Cartier

The massive canvases are perfectly brought to life at the Fondation Cartier in Paris. Designed by Jean Nouvel in 1994, the lofty steel and glass structure is centered among a field of lush greenery, engulfing museumgoers in a vibrant natural oasis through views of the outdoors as well as the canvases.

Image Credit: Architectural Digest

After two COVID-related delays, the show debuts just in time for summer, featuring 30 of the 107 canvases selected by Hirst and Hervé Chandès (the general director of the Fondation Cartier). The exhibition will remain on view until January 2022.