One contemporary artist who caught my interest was Damien Hirst. His artwork shaped and shared interests developing during the decade 1987-1997 to reflect changes in contemporary life. In the age of art as a commodity, Hirst made spot paintings that became luxury designer goods. He later moved to hands-on art in his spin-paintings which expressed his accidental and expressive energy of the haphazard. Hirst’s art is all about death including, his famous portrayal of sharks and bovine bisector. “Hirst’s work is an examination of the processes of life and death: the ironies, falsehoods and desires we have. His makings can be roughly grouped into three areas: paintings, cabinet sculptures and the glass tank pieces”. After looking at several pieces of Hirst’s artwork, his artwork does fit into these categories mostly depicting death.
The sculpture that I find the most fascinating is titled "For The Love of God," and he got this name from his mother who asked him, “For the love of God, what are you going to do next?” According to the New York Times, “this piece which was cast from an 18th century skull be bought in London, was influenced by Mexican skulls encrusted in turquoise.” Hirst thought it would be interesting to do a skull in all diamonds, but costly which had him thinking it might be the right thing to do. Hirst argued that “Death is such a heavy subject, it would be good to make something that laughed in the face of it”. The skull is propped behind reinforced glass in a darkened room in the White cube gallery in East London. The skull is covered with 8,601 flawless diamonds which is three times the number on the crown the Queen wears on state occasions. Even the eye sockets and the holes for the nose have been filled with hundreds of jewels. A 52 carat pear shaped stone is set into the forehead, surrounded by 14 diamonds. The work took 18 months to make and the diamonds worth $20 million were paid for by Hirst and the gallery.
This piece will likely sell for as much as $100 million, making it the priciest contemporary artwork ever made. This brings up the issue of how art is spiraling out of control and becoming more costly. According to the New York Times, the art market has become drunk with money lately, with major auctions routinely raising record prices for artists old and new. White Cube gallery is selling several limited edition silkscreen prints of the work, priced from $1450 to $16,000 for ones sprinkled with diamond dust. In his glittering career this is Hirst’s most audacious effort yet and being worth 80 million, his most expensive too. Hirst claims that this piece signifies victory of death, however, think about how many lives he could have saved with this 80 million dollars.
Also Hirst who financed this piece himself watched for months as the price of international diamonds rose while the Bond Street gem dealer Bently & Skinner tried to corner the market for Hirst’s benefit. Given the ongoing controversy over the blood diamonds from Africa, the sculpture now has the potential to be about death in a more literal way. I feel that this is not a fair accusation towards Hirst because it can then be said that every couple looking at an engagement ring should have to worry about how the diamonds were mined. Hirst should not feel guilty because if he wasn’t going to be buying the diamonds, someone else would have. Hirst might have created something that people actually died over which makes one think if this sculpture actually cost people there lives, is it something that can be idolized and sold as art. There have been a variety of remarks pertaining to this piece. Some think of it as a publicity stunt from the man best known for pickling cows and sheep in the name of art, while others see it as a profound statement about death. Robin Simon, editor of the British Art Journal, said “All of Hirst’s works are stunts, but this one is just a more expensive stunt. It’s vacuous nonsense”. All of Hirst’s glass tank pieces and other work including the skull are not even made by Hirst. He comes up with the concepts and then has trained specialists in their field do the rest. I agree in some extent with the criticisms that have been made towards Hirst because he himself is not creating the art, rather workers that he has hired who are trained in their field. However, he is the one who designs the art and has the idea to make a diamond skull. Without Hirst’s artistic style, the art world would be missing a variety of very unique pieces.
Damien Hirst have made several comments about this piece of work, such as; “I hope it makes the people who see it feel good, that it’s uplifting, that it takes your breath away," and "it works much better than I imagined. You just want it to be flawless, like a diamond is a flawless”. In class we learned that originally, Hirst wanted this piece to be darker; however, the piece is more of a symbol of victory of life over death. I personally feel that Damien Hirst a unique contemporary artist who’s artwork is like no other. Although other artists have made art out of everyday items such as Andy Warhol with his Brillo boxes and Campbell’s soup cans, they do not compare to the creations that Hirst has imagined and displayed.
Personally I feel that the skull symbolizes that there is a life after death, one that bright and glamorous. Death is not something dark and mysterious, rather inevitable and it should be something that one accepts. The shining and glittery piece symbolizes the deceased shining down on us portraying a happy afterlife. Hirst was able to make even the scariest and depressing thing in this world, death, less fearful, dark and depressing. The fact that I as well as everyone else who has seen this piece of art has had a reaction and felt emotion shows what a great artist Damien Hirst truly is.
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