You are free to use it to write your own assignment, however you must reference it properly. If you are the original creator of this paper and no longer wish to have it published on StudyCorgi, request the removal. Learn More. Cite this paper Select style. Reference StudyCorgi. Bibliography StudyCorgi. References StudyCorgi. Then you see the diamonds that gather and emanate the light — and then in particular the remarkably even and regular texture of the small diamonds.
At one point that texture seemed to me as gentle as Victorian needlework, which even gave the skull tenderness: a jewel asleep. The effect of the intense glow of light was that the cavities in the skull did look not so much like cadaverous hollows. Their shadows were filled with light. In the photograph those cavities are much more sinister. In that very frontal view, with its taut outline against black, the skull looks like a forbidding mask — and in that mask the grimace of the mouth and teeth has become the defining visual aspect.
From that photographic image one can deduce, almost, that Damien Hirst had wanted to give the skull-mask a strong expression — as if even death still has an expressive face. The real diamond skull is enigmatic, philosophical, even strangely peaceful; its photographic transformation is similarly enigmatic, but also menacing and very tough.
When I wrote the first part of this text I had only seen the graphic summary. But that suited my purpose: to write about the conceptual meaning of a platinum skull covered with real diamonds, about the idea that the indestructible luxury of the object represented a victory over decay and death. Then when I saw the real skull I enjoyed myself tremendously in seeing it; I discovered the brilliant artistry of the artist in devising it and actually have it made.
Gradually the notion that it was made from very precious materials faded from my head: as in a museum, when you are rather detached contemplating a beautiful vessel, gold encrusted with diamonds.
The thing is at rest: just an historical object, and you can quietly admire the superb workmanship and the elegance of its design. The Hirst skull is not, however, just an exercise in beauty. The piece is much more ambiguous now because it has entered the world — and our awareness — as a contemporary work of art.
It stirs things up; it is not at rest at all, and is formally challenging and daring and insolent. It is taking sculpture to the limit. The skull was first conceived and signed in drawings. It is interesting to note that in all the drawings I have seen, the skull is only lightly, cursorily sketched.
The texture of the diamond covering was then scribbled in a much more detailed manner, in irregular patches, leaving other parts of the skull bare. The emphasis shifts from general shape to what really matters: the detailed articulation of surface. When the drawing gets more decisive it is mostly around the hollows of the absent eyes and the grimace of the mouth. There more pressure is applied to the pencil. The drawing becomes more exploratory and concentrated.
Hirst is looking for an expression he wants the skull to have. The expressions vary from drawing to drawing: they seem to swing from the sinister to the burlesque and back again. Somehow the skull is also stiffly laughing about itself. While drawing then, Damien Hirst worked not at all on a conceptual piece but on the precise formulation of a sculptural object, how that could be meticulously crafted.
All formal deliberations that were considered in the drawings somehow found their way into the finished skull, even as those deliberations had to be translated into the more formal craft of setting diamonds.
In the end then, when I finally saw the real diamond skull, it was a skull but even more it was an extremely delicate, condensed, small sculpture in the form of a skull — and it was breathtakingly beautiful. That is how I looked at it: at its refined form, at the sparkling texture and dense rhythm of the diamonds, at the sculpted light.
I looked at the thing as a wonderful work of fragile art, as John Keats did when looking at the Grecian Urn:. An artist friend of mine called me after he had seen the skull reproduced in a newspaper.
It is so radical, this is even beyond Bruce Nauman. The great theatrical pieces with sharks and sheep and cows and flies buzzing around rotting flesh, were also realistic — but their realism was performed with romantic flamboyance. Then, having to do with death forever a popular theme in art there was often something elegiac about them. At times I saw them as the modern successors of those lavish sepulchral monuments one sees in grand churches.
Such memories cannot be avoided because that is how our minds work. By Jeremy Lovell. The skull, cast from a year-old 18th century European man but retaining the original teeth, is coated with 8, diamonds, including a large pink diamond worth more than four million pounds in the centre of its forehead. Photo via The Telegraph. Categories: Art and Ephemera.
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