Damien Hirst’s skull at the Rijksmuseum:
Rock star on tour

R.J. Preece (ADP)
artdesigncafé | café library | Published 28 November 2010
This article was previously published in Sculpture magazine, March 2009, pp. 14-5.

For just over a month (November 1–December 15, 2008), Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum acquired a new art chapel, an almost pitch-black, 30-square-meter room housing Damien Hirst’s spotlighted skull, For the Love of God (2007). I entered the space after taking part in what was almost a procession. Accompanying me on my sneak peek were a German and a Belgian journalist, the museum’s general director, a curator of 17th-century art, a recent hire for contemporary interventions, and a museum press officer. We walked through rooms filled with old masters, the three writers carrying contemporary attributes—glossy black shopping bags with large diamond skulls imposed on them and filled with press kits, catalogues, and photo CDs.

Tension between art, marketing, and celebrity defined this installation of the diamond skull and the accompanying exhibition of 17th-century art guest-curated by Damien Hirst. [1] The same tension may also explain why Hirst’s work is difficult to place. It seems to touch early 21st-century life in global capitalism: installed with intense Caravaggesque lighting beamed strategically from above, the entire package was designed to dazzle as well as repulse. But most of all, it was designed to get people talking.

What’s particularly impressive about For the Love of God, and its accompanying exhibition, is how it generates a wide range of strong reactions—and how it seems to marshal so many key issues and strategies, with impressive quantitative results. This success is arguably led by the skull’s sensational form, costly materials, and price on the one hand, and its themes—both intellectual and emotional—such as greed, death, and immortality on the other. Its placement inside a prestigious and historical European art collection not only added a new context for the work to generate discussions about meaning, it also acted as an additional media/communications power-layer and talking point. At the same time, we see brand strengthening not only for the skull, the new rock star, but also for Damien Hirst, the art star, as well as for the Rijksmuseum.

At first, I found For the Love of God a bit like an over-the-top freak-object, a disco death-head, almost camp. Are all of these diamonds real? But what struck me was that the skull appears smaller and more fragile than its confident appearance in photographs and on television. This draws an important distinction between original and mass-media re-presentation in relation to discussions on celebrities.

Set inside a glass case, this precious item of highly exclusive global privilege also became a public object for visitors who paid to enter the chapel for the unique experience and entertainment. Questioning many things about money, celebrity, cult of personality, and mass media, the work looks like a twisted, isolated, painful trap. Is this what Damien Hirst has learned on his remarkable journey? How symbolic and how personal is this object?

Reference:
[1] See John A. Walker, Art and Celebrity (2003) and Art in the Age of Mass Media (3rd. ed., 2001), both published by Pluto Press, for an overview of the general issues.

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