Research Damien Hirst's work For the Love of God(2007) in order to answer the following questions;
1. Describe the work, giving details of the form and materials.
This work is It's a skull made out of platinum, diamonds, and human teeth. The total thing has 8,601 flawless diamonds and comes in at 1,106.18 carats.,including a pear-shaped diamond,which is seen as the centrepiece of the work lies on the forehead..The entire skull is covered in the diamond with the exception of the teeth of the skull. It's the most expensive piece of art ever created, costing between $16 and $20 million to make, and $99 million to buy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/may/21/arts.artsnews
2. What does the work mean? What is Damien Hirst communicating in the work?
The diamond skull tend towant to celebrate life by saying to hell with death .It represents the meaning of transience of human existence. This work has no precedent in art history, the skull is supernatural. It also indicates the death is relentless. The Skull of Diamonds is pureglory ,it is not like the tearful sadness of a vanitas scene.
3. How does Hirst's diamond encrusted skull relate to Mercantilism and to conspicuous consumption?
Cultures the world over have used human skulls as sacred objects in rites that involve the celebration of life and the contemplation of death. It always touches us deeply to see a human skull festooned with flowers or decorated with emblems of the living. It is only just, given what our society deems valuable, to encrust this skull with gems more excessively than any other object. That is painting it in the best possible light, and I have no doubt that, should the object go up for auction, the catalogue sales-pitch will read along those lines. But we, being Warholians, know better. It’s mostly about money. It’s about the spectacle of money. We gape in awe at the thing, as we would an aircraft carrier or the Great Pyramid. Only it’s not physical size or technical complexity that fascinates, but the glittering visage of such a staggering amount of money smiling back at us (it’s a hell of a lot more than the money you could be saving with Geico). It’s about Damien Hirst, wielder of this power, which is money, and about the person or persons who can afford to buy it. That is what the Age of Warhol has become.
4. How much did the work cost, and how much was it sold for, and who bought it?
1. It costs £14 million to produce, the work went on display at the White Cube gallery in London in an exhibition Beyond belief with an asking price of £50 million. This would have been the highest price ever paid for a single work by a living artist.
London’s White Cube gallery announced that British artist Damien Hirst diamond-encrusted skull sold for $100 million dollars. The skull cost $20 million to make, including diamonds and fabrication, according to Dunphy.
http://gallery.artron.net/show_news.php?newid=33770
5. What are some of the differing opinions of the journalists in the newspaper and blog articles? What did they think of the work?
In 2009, Spanish artist Eugenio Merino unveiled a piece entitled 4 The Love of Go(l)d" a giant sculpture, encased in glass, of Hirst shooting himself in the head. Merino, in fact an admirer of Hirst, intended the piece as a comment on the emphasis on money within the art world, and with Hirst in particular. "I thought that, given that he thinks so much about money, his next work could be that he shot himself," said Merino. "Like that the value of his work would increase dramatically...Obviously, though, he would not be around to enjoy it
Richard Dorment, art critic of The Daily Telegraph, wrote: "If anyone but Hirst had made this curious object, we would be struck by its vulgarity. It looks like the kind of thing Asprey or Harrods might sell to credulous visitors from the oil states with unlimited amounts of money to spend, little taste, and no knowledge of art. I can imagine it gracing the drawing room of some African dictator or Colombian drug baron. But not just anyone made it - Hirst did. Knowing this, we look at it in a different way and realise that in the most brutal, direct way possible, For the Love of God questions something about the morality of art and money
6. Based on your research, what is your opinion of the work, as an object or a work of art.
To be honest, I do not like this work. In my point of view, The amount of money he spent on this work is ridiculous, and the person who bought it is insane. We can use these money do other meaningful things,like donating to developing countries where the people are suffering from starving, poor education and health system. Furthermore, the meaning of are can not measured by money.
www.telegraph.co.uk › Culture › Culture News
