April 5, 2011 – So…I don’t know if you knew this, but we all co-exist in a reality with a human skull covered in millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds. Crazy, right? Crazier, it was created under the auspices of art and not “just something to do” and is called For the Love of God because the artist’s mother apparently had previously asked him “For the love of God, what are you going to do next?” However, despite the irrelevant name and its silly backstory, now that I’ve seen the object firsthand, with the sparkly skull inches from my own, I can definitely say that I am impressed to the point of wanting to rip mine out and swap. The art question has become totally irrelevant to me.
Created by Damien Hirst in 2007, For the Love of God is a platinum cast of an actual 200-year-old male adult human skull that Hirst picked up in a London taxidermy shop. After creating the expensive head infrastructure, he then coated it with 8,601 diamonds weighing more than 1100 carats like he was spreading seeds on a Chia Pet. Set in the middle of the forehead and breaking up the even pattern of smaller jewels that follow the exact contours of the bone is a large, pear-shaped diamond surrounded by smaller diamond petals. As a final flourish, Hirst took the teeth from the original skull and set them in the jawbones of the skull. All told, the most common estimate for the complete bedazzled skull, including platinum and diamond and bone and effort, is $20-$30 million.
Your and my skulls are probably worth the cost of a helmet each, and that’s only in some states.
While I was in Italy last week, I happened to cross paths with the bejeweled brain case in Florence. Turns out, it was in its last month of a five-month-long display at the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence’s medieval castle of a town hall that shares a piazza with the world-famous Loggia dei Lanzi, around the corner from the also world-famous Uffizi Gallery. It’s only the third public display of the skull in four years, and I would call it destiny were I not reserving that seat for when my superficially worthless knowledge of cereal box art is called on by the President to save the world.
Of course, you’ve probably already guessed it based on the pictures that I’ve chosen for this article, but photography of the Hirst skull wasn’t allowed by such as us. Apparently, it’s worth so much that even a picture of it is more than the artist and gallery can spare. But they do have a whole gift shop full of products bearing its image that they offer as consolation. However, since the skull was mainly a media stunt in the first place, every news outlet in the world has featured its image, so there are pics everywhere on the Internet. Like here.
We were the only ones there since the museum had just opened, and the armed guard apparently decided that we looked fine without bullet holes and let us walk down the Studiolo di Francesco I, a short hallway elaborately covered ceiling-to-floor in lavish artwork and used in its day as a cabinet of curiosities and a study. Of course, we didn’t so much as pause to look around at the oddly appropriate venue. There was a skull and spectacle promised at the end of that hallway and we continued, entering through a curtain into a room not much bigger than a closet.
My first impression was that the skull was suspended in void. The room was painted black and covered in black curtains. The only light in the room was a sequence of small spotlights aimed directly at the skull in its custom-fitted glass case on its black-covered stand, as well as a small flashlight that denoted the presence of another armed guard close enough to go with pistol whipping over firing.
Not that I’m defending the skull. Like everybody else who has seen or heard of this piece, the question, “Wherefore art? Thou?” is still bouncing around my own less-glitzy skull. Of course, one of the purposes of art is to make you ask questions. I’m just not sure that the first question an artwork should inspire is, “Who the heck came up with all the money to fund this?”
Then again, days before I saw For the Love of God, I toured the Sistine Chapel, an entire gigantic holy chamber covered in some of the most precious artwork in the world painted by one of its unequaled masters and his staff over the course of a decade, all told. It was overwhelming…and obviously hyper-expensive. The only reason “Who the heck came up with all the money to fund this?” didn’t pop into my head is because I already knew the answer. The Catholic Church.
Sure, Hirst’s For the Love of God is gimmicky, but I can dig a good gimmick, as long as he doesn’t beat it into the ground, and I’ve got a weakness for the skull shape, so seeing the shiny object pretty much made my day and I’m glad the thing exists. Truth is, were you to find it in an Aztec temple, you’d be jazzed. It’s just knowing that a Bored Rich Dude made it (turns out Hirst financed the project himself and that he’s one of the richest artists on the planet, if not the richest) that hurts the effect a little. As if the Aztecs didn’t have BRDs.
