For the Love of God
Encyclopedia
For the Love of God is a sculpture by artist Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst
Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...
produced in 2007. It consists of a platinum
Platinum
Platinum is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pt and an atomic number of 78. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina del Pinto, which is literally translated into "little silver of the Pinto River." It is a dense, malleable, ductile, precious, gray-white transition metal...
cast of a human skull encrusted with 8,601 flawless diamond
Diamond
In mineralogy, diamond is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions...
s, including a pear-shaped pink diamond located in the forehead. Costing £14 million to produce, the work went on display at the White Cube
White Cube
White Cube is a contemporary art gallery designed by MRJ Rundell & Associates in Hoxton Square in the East End of London Mason's Yard, in central London and White Cube Bermondsey in South East London...
gallery in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in an exhibition Beyond belief with an asking price of £50 million. This would have been the highest price ever paid for a single work by a living artist.
Production
The human skull used as the base for the work, bought in a shop in IslingtonIslington
Islington is a neighbourhood in Greater London, England and forms the central district of the London Borough of Islington. It is a district of Inner London, spanning from Islington High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the area around the busy Upper Street...
, is thought to be that of a European
European ethnic groups
The ethnic groups in Europe are the various ethnic groups that reside in the nations of Europe. European ethnology is the field of anthropology focusing on Europe....
living between 1720 and 1810. The work's title was supposedly inspired by Hirst's mother, who once asked, “For the love of God, what are you going to do next?”
8,601 flawless pavé-laid diamonds, weighing in total 1106.18 carats (221.2 g), over a platinum cast, cover the entirety of the skull, with the exception of the original teeth of the skull. At the centre of the forehead lies a pear-shaped pink diamond, the centrepiece of the work. All diamonds used for the work are said to be ethically sourced.
Hirst stated the idea for the work came from a Aztec
Aztec
The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...
turquoise
Turquoise
Turquoise is an opaque, blue-to-green mineral that is a hydrous phosphate of copper and aluminium, with the chemical formula CuAl648·4. It is rare and valuable in finer grades and has been prized as a gem and ornamental stone for thousands of years owing to its unique hue...
skull at the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
.
Artist John LeKay
John LeKay
John LeKay is an English conceptual and installation artist and sculptor, who lives in New York. In 1993, he began to make skulls covered in crystal: he has accused Damien Hirst of copying this and other ideas. He publishes the web site, heyokamagazine.-Life and work:John LeKay was born in London...
, a friend of Hirst's in the early 1990s, said the work is based on a skull covered with crystal
Crystal
A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are arranged in an orderly repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions. The scientific study of crystals and crystal formation is known as crystallography...
s which LeKay had made in 1993. LeKay said, "When I heard he was doing it, I felt like I was being punched in the gut. When I saw the image online, I felt that a part of me was in the piece. I was a bit shocked."
Exhibition
On 1 June 2007, For the Love of God went on display in an illuminated glass case in a darkened room on the top floor of the White CubeWhite Cube
White Cube is a contemporary art gallery designed by MRJ Rundell & Associates in Hoxton Square in the East End of London Mason's Yard, in central London and White Cube Bermondsey in South East London...
gallery in St James's, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
with heavy security. It was reported on 11 June 2007 that the singer George Michael
George Michael
George Michael is a British musician, singer, songwriter and record producer who rose to fame in the 1980s when he formed the pop duo Wham! with his school friend, Andrew Ridgeley...
and his partner Kenny Goss were interested in purchasing the piece for around £50 million.
November-December 2008, Hirst exhibited the diamond skull at the historic Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands amidst public controversy. The skull was exhibited next to an exhibition of paintings from the collection of the museum that were selected and curated by Hirst. According to Wim Pijbes, the museum director, there wasn't controversy however to show the skull in the historic museum among the board members. He explained that the exhibition "will attract people--and give a new aspect to the image of the Rijksmuseum as well. It boosts our image. Of course, we do the Old Masters but we are not a 'yesterday institution'. It's for now. And Damien Hirst shows this in a very strong way." A Belgian journalist in response remarked how the installation of the diamond skull at the Rijks was "an intententionally quite controversial project".
Sale
The Art Newspaper
The Art Newspaper is a monthly newspaper about the visual arts based in London.It is published in a newspaper, rather than a magazine, format...
, claims that Hirst had failed to find a buyer and had been trying to offload the skull for £38 million. Immediately after these allegations were made, Hirst claimed he had sold it for the full asking price, in cash, leaving no paper trail. The consortium that bought the piece included Hirst himself.
Harry Levy, vice chairman of the London Diamond Bourse and Club, said "I would estimate the true worth of the skull as somewhere between £7 million and £10 million." Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs would expect £8.5 million in VAT payments, if Hirst really did receive £50 million. David Lee
David Lee (art critic)
David Lee is an outspoken, English, contemporary, art critic—condemning conceptual art in general and the Turner Prize in particular...
, editor of The Jackdaw, commented "Everyone in the art world knows Hirst hasn't sold the skull. It's clearly just an elaborate ruse to drum up publicity and rewrite the book value of all his other work."
Media reporting and reviews
The media coverage of the "sale" of the diamond skull was extensive and led some to question to what extent the announcement of the sale was some kind of media art, especially as the "sale" continues to be in question. This was further supported by the performative nature of the Sotheby's exhibition and auction of Hirst's artwork the following year.In an article in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....
said, "Damien Hirst is a brand, because the art form of the 21st century is marketing. To develop so strong a brand on so conspicuously threadbare a rationale is hugely creative - revolutionary even."
Richard Dorment, art critic of The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, wrote: "If anyone but Hirst had made this curious object, we would be struck by its vulgarity. It looks like the kind of thing Asprey
Asprey
Asprey is a British luxury brand with a heritage that dates back to 1781. The brand offers an extensive range of gifts, jewellery, watches, leather, silver, bone china, crystal and rare books, all available in its flagship New Bond Street store. Asprey was once the destination for crowns,...
or Harrods
Harrods
Harrods is an upmarket department store located in Brompton Road in Brompton, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. The Harrods brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies including Harrods Bank, Harrods Estates, Harrods Aviation and Air...
might sell to credulous visitors from the oil states with unlimited amounts of money to spend, little taste, and no knowledge of art. I can imagine it gracing the drawing room of some African dictator or Colombian drug baron. But not just anyone made it - Hirst did. Knowing this, we look at it in a different way and realise that in the most brutal, direct way possible, For the Love of God questions something about the morality of art and money."
Regarding the announcement of the "sale" of the diamond skull, Robert Preece, an art critic of Sculpture magazine, considers it to be a kind of media art performance with the appropriation of media structures. Referring to the Sotheby's "sale" and the "sale" of the diamond skull, he writes, "I am not concerned with the details of these sales. What matters to me is that they were announced--unleashed, picked up, printed, reprinted, accelerated, translated, and multiplied across global media." This sort of approach was highlighted with a Leeds 13 art/media intervention in 1998, in which artist Leeds 13 member Sarah Thornton has described the media coverage as "art" and the journalists as participants in the art performance, and artist as celebrity publicity maker extends back to Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, and even Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
, Salvador Dali
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
and Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
. The performative nature was later addressed in the exhibition at Tate Modern, "Pop Life: Art in a material world", to which critic Ben Lewis found it very offensive: "... the gallery texts have the temerity to claim that the greed-fuelled auction sale was a work of performance art in itself. That’s just the same as Stockhausen calling 9/11 a work of art."
Artistic responses
A photo of the work thrown out with rubbish bags outside the White Cube gallery was a spoof by artist Laura KeebleLaura Keeble
Laura Keeble is a British artist. She uses interventionist and subversive strategies to create pauses in perception and question societal norms...
who created a replica skull with 6522 Swarovski crystals.
In 2008, the Gaelic-language publisher Ùr-sgeul
Ùr-sgeul
Ùr-sgeul is an independent publisher of new Scottish Gaelic prose. The name Ùr-sgeul is a Gaelic word which translates variously as: a romance, a novel or a recent tale.-History:Ùr-sgeul was founded in 2003 as a project to promote new Gaelic fiction...
published a short story by Maoilios Caimbeul
Maoilios Caimbeul
Maoilios Caimbeul is an award-winning Scottish writer of poetry, prose and children's literature. He writes in Scottish Gaelic....
, "An Claigeann aig Damien Hirst" ("Damian Hirst's Skull"), as a fictional response to the work of art. This in turn was followed in 2009, by a single performed by the Gaelic rock band, Na Gathan
Na Gathan
- History :Na Gathan were formed in 2007 and first came to national attention in Scotland when they appeared in a piece on the Rapal music program on BBC2 that documented their involvement in organizing the Celtic Connections unofficial fringe held in Glasgow early in 2008...
, Claigeann Damien Hirst (Damian Hirst's Skull), released by Ùr-sgeul, which was inspired by Caimbeul's work. The song was shortlisted in the Nòs-ùr contest for a new song in a Celtic language or Scots.
In December 2008 Hirst threatened to sue the artist Cartrain
Cartrain
Cartrain , often stylised cartяain, is a British artist associated with the graffiti urban art movement. YBA artist Damien Hirst has threatened to take legal steps against Cartain over his art and activities.-Early life:...
for copyright infringement. Cartrain had incorporated photos of For the Love of God into collages and sold them on the Internet.
In 2009, Spanish artist Eugenio Merino unveiled a piece entitled 4 The Love of Go(l)d" a giant sculpture, encased in glass, of Hirst shooting himself in the head. Merino, in fact an admirer of Hirst, intended the piece as a comment on the emphasis on money within the art world, and with Hirst in particular. "I thought that, given that he thinks so much about money, his next work could be that he shot himself," said Merino. "Like that the value of his work would increase dramatically...Obviously, though, he would not be around to enjoy it."