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Jonathan Jones (Reaching for the stars on butterfly wings, 20 September) awards five stars to an exhibition in which Damien Hirst “wants you to feel the awe-inspiring miracles of life” by having thousands of butterflies committed to death so as to use their wings. He compounds the irony by maintaining that this is an artist “in awe of life” – and that far from exploiting nature, Hirst worships it.
Come off it, Jonathan. This use of dead butterflies for gratuitous pleasure is an exploitation of nature of the most obvious kind and has no place in a world in which butterfly conservation is of increasing importance. The State of the UK’s Butterflies 2015 report says 76% of resident and migrant butterflies declined in abundance, occurrence or both over the last four decades, and their role as sensitive indicators of the health of the environment is now well recognised. On a day when the Guardian praised the actions of environmental campaigners, it was disappointing and concerning to see an act of environmental destruction celebrated in this way.
Bill Lockwood
Stone, Staffordshire
• In his review of Damien Hirst’s exhibition, Jonathan Jones resorts to “whataboutery” in seeking to compare “this extravagant use of bits of animals” to the volume of animal specimens held at the Natural History Museum. This is absurd, given that the latter were gathered over centuries and in large measure for scientific purposes (indeed, the museum’s collection includes many from Darwin’s famous voyage with HMS Beagle). But whatever view you take on killing thousands of butterflies to create these works, to suggest that the wings of dead insects reflect Hirst’s “awe of life” is astonishing. Give me one glint from the shifting wings of a live butterfly in its natural habitat over this, any day.
Trevor Moore
London
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