Damien Hirst’s Diamond Skull goes on Show at Russia’s Hermitage
Damien Hirst’s latest artwork is this life-size platinum skull encrusted with 8,601 fine diamonds. The sculpture, titled “For The Love of God,” will likely sell for as much as $100 million, making it the priciest contemporary artwork ever made. White Cube gallery is selling several limited edition silkscreen prints of the work, priced from £900 to £10,000, for one sprinkled with diamond dust. The title of the piece comes from Hirst’s mother who asked her son, “For the love of God, what are you going to do next?”
This piece, which was cast from an 18th-century skull he bought from a shop in Islington, north London, thought to belong to a 35-year-old European who lived between 1720 and 1810. Hirst was influenced by Mexican skulls encrusted in turquoise. “I remember thinking it would be great to do a diamond one — but just prohibitively expensive,” he recalls. “Then I started to think — maybe that’s why it is a good thing to do. Death is such a heavy subject, it would be good to make something that laughed in the face of it.”
The dazzle of the diamonds might outshine any meaning Hirst attaches to it, and that could be a problem. Its value as jewelry alone is preposterous. Hirst, who financed the piece himself, watched for months as the price of international diamonds rose while the Bond Street gem dealer Bentley & Skinner tried to corner the market for the artist’s benefit. Given the ongoing controversy over blood diamonds from Africa, “For the Love of God” now has the potential to be about death in a more literal way.
The piece is not exactly the stuff of public art, but Hirst says he hopes that an institution like the British Museum might put it on display for a while before it disappears into a vault, never to be seen again. Whether the piece is seen or not, Hirst will likely go down in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most extravagant artist.
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The Sources : The Iceman Cometh, William Shaw , New York Times Magazine, Published June 3, 2007/ Boingboing, David Pescovitz, posted June 2, 2007 /Supertouch, Jamie O’ Shea, “Technique,The making of Damien Hirst Diamond Skull” Photos , Red Clover Pix
The Gallery: The White Cube, Hoxton Square site is 48 Hoxton Square, London N1 6PB +44 (0) 2079305373 //www.whitecube.com/editions/
The Video: BBC short video : http: //news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6712015.stm
Damien Hirst - The Agony and the Ecstasy Napoli /http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjj7FT-DheA
