Damien Hirst's Memento Mori

Damian Hirst unveiled an extremely thought provoking artwork last week and the world shrugged. The piece which reportedly cost 20 million dollars to produce is comprised of the skull of a 19th century adult male that has been set with hundreds of high quality diamonds including a rare and fine light pink stone over fifty carats. The mandible was removed and recast in platinum and the teeth were inserted into the new precious grill. The asking price is $100 million dollars and supposedly there have already been several serious inquiries. I think it will sell - if the project isn't a hoax. Damian may want to be catchin' up with the Banksys.

Can the size difference be attributed to nutrition?

I hesitate to start a rant about values, culture, the decline of all civilization. It would only lead to a profound sadness about Lindsay Lohan and the Salton Sea. I predict there will be limited general interest in Hirst's latest work and I don't want to feed any scrap of gawking.

If his intention is reflexive of the grotesque consumerist culture, then well-done son.

Unfortunately, he has a tendency toward that Michael Jackson morbid acquisitiveness as witnessed by his offer to purchase the Walter Potter collection of Victorian Taxidermy for a million or so. Potter preserved dozens of freshly drowned kittens and bunnies in decidedly anthropromorphic settings like schoolrooms and tea parties.

So Mr. Hirst courts controversy with a clear eye toward the iconographic. I'm sure that the critical sensibility includes historic references like Hamlet, the crystal skulls, the Mayan cult of skulls, the Capuchin monasteries, memento mori, etc. etc.

But in this day and age with absolute environmental disaster and starvation detailed instantaneously from wide geographies I wonder if it isn't unwise - even for a renowned artist -to cater to self-indulgent and adolescent necrophilia.

We'll see how this plays out. I really hope these are Swarovski crystals.

More about Potter's Taxidynamic compulsions in this 'kids friendly' and really scary didactic piece.

And afterthought, full disclosure, relational - my Lover's Discourse project contains a deer skull (a natural death in the wilds of West Virginia, I hope). It illustrates Barthe's chapter titled "Ecorche (to be flayed)". Also present -- a silkscreen of a silkscreen of a silkscreen of Andy Warhol's skull and 19th and early 20th century engravings of ecorche. The difference? I would spend my 20 million on aid to the planet and fish my skulls from the back water of Salt Lick creek. I hate my self-righteousness at this moment. Maybe that's Hirst's point? It's still too expensive.