Going out on a limb
DURING the miseries of the pandemic, it has been particularly cheering to be reminded of Nature’s immunity to such minor distractions as human diseases. As David Hockney pointed out during the first lockdown, ‘do remember they can’t cancel the spring’, a fact triumphantly demonstrated in his recent Royal Academy exhibition celebrating the arrival of spring 2020 in his Normandy garden (Artist of the week, April 7). Indeed, Mr Hockney is not the only contemporary artist whose latest work is full of the joys of spring. Damien Hirst has also embraced the vernal spirit of renewal in a new series of cherry-blossom paintings that was recently unveiled at the Fondation Cartier in Paris.
‘Artists love trees not only for their beauty, but for their rich symbolism’
If it took lockdown to make the former bad boy of Britart fall in love with Nature, other artists haven’t needed that stimulus. Over recent decades,
