Why I love Damien Hirst’s skull (2008)
The diamond skull breaks new ground for media / communications art, argues R.J. Preece.
artdesigncafé | Professional development | Published 15 September 2009
This article was previously published in Sculpture, 27(1), January 2008, pp. 42-5.
A diamond-encrusted skull…worth £50m (US $100m)…said to be the most expensive piece of contemporary art…entirely covered in 8,601 jewels… skull of a 35-year-old man from the 18th century…new teeth were made… at a cost of £14m (US $28m)…“It works much better than I imagined. I was slightly worried that we’d end up with an Ali G ring…I wouldn’t mind if it happened to my skull after my death.”
— As of October 1, 2007, a Google search (in English) of [“Damien
Hirst” +“skull”] commanded about 108,000 hits. A previous search on
September 13, just after the first reports of the skull’s sale, produced
about 212,000 hits.
Perhaps I’ve confused some readers with this introduction. So, let me start out by stating: I love Damien Hirst’s skull, otherwise titled For the love of God (2007). Why, you might be asking? Because this work designed by Hirst and his team brilliantly fuses the media/communications potential of an artwork with its artistic expression. And with the skull’s complementary contexts, this media/communications combo (the artwork and its language) propelled its reach far beyond the art world, securing it a wider range of media coverage, even to the point of hitting the headlines in several countries.
For the love of God, and the furor surrounding it, also crossed language barriers with incredible speed and efficacy. My jaw dropped the day I saw the skull and the reported sale on my msn.nl start-up screen— in Dutch. I wish I had set up a daily alert on Google to record the rise in Google hits across the world’s top 25 languages, to watch this snowballing media and Internet discourse in full multilingual action.
In a strand of my previous writings, I’ve focused on the artwork, its embedded language, and its embedded media/communications power. I’ve referred to the power of visual elements and the principles of design, effective copywriting, and press relations— within the context of critical media analysis. This work has included analyses of media-savvy designer Philippe Starck and artists Marc Quinn and Tracey Emin— plus a rare interview, my favorite actually, with the creative mind behind Press Relations and Publications at White Cube gallery.[1]
What strikes me about the skull is its giant stride forward in media coverage— bejeweled, bizarre, and bewitching— and what lurks at the heart of this interest— price. Pounds, dollars— “most expensive ever,” our dear skull has demonstrated new opportunities in international cross-media coverage for contemporary artworks. This impact, and the context of the work, shows the power of media/communications strategies when embedded in a work and combined with visual art language and expression. The synergy makes one question to what extent combined media strategies (mass media and visual media) are driving some artistic practices and ask if what is surfacing is like a staged art intervention. The extent to which this can be characterized as performative art is contentious and up for debate.[2]
References:
[1] See “Just a Load of Shock?: A Conversation with Marc Quinn”, Sculpture, October 2000; reprinted in Conversations
on Sculpture (ISC Press, 2007); “Artist Over—and In—The Broadsheets”, Parkett, 63, 2001. This essay on Emin’s work
addresses her involvement in media/communications; as agreed, Emin approved the text prior to publication. “Behind the Scenes: Now It’s Honey’s Turn”, Make, 92, 2002. Honey Luard was offered
and accepted text approval prior to publication, with the agreement of then-Make editor Patricia Ellis. Also, see comments by Mark Pimlott in Sculpture 23(4) in relation to Starck hotels and Hirst/Emin/Quinn.
[2] Clearly the precedents here include Andy Warhol, Chris Burden, Jeff Koons, and Mark Kostabi, with parallels to Tracey Emin and Spencer Tunick.
Damien Hirst - diamond skull - media coverage: 1 | 2 | 3
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