POLL: How offensive is Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted baby skull?

Few artists know how to polarize the public like Damien Hirst, the British provocateur and Turner Prize winner whose most famous works include a shark preserved in a tank of formaldehyde, a living installation of a fly's life cycle and a sculpture depicting an anatomical cross-section of a pregnant woman titled "Virgin Mother."

This week, Hirst finds himself once more at the center of art-world chatter thanks to his 2008 sculpture "For Heaven's Sake," which depicts a human baby skull covered in diamonds. The work is part of a Hirst solo show that is scheduled to open this month at the new Gagosian Gallery in Hong Kong.

The Gagosian's website offers this description of the sculpture: "For Heaven's Sake (2008) is a life-size human baby skull cast in platinum and covered in 8,128 pavé-set perfect diamonds: 7,105 natural fancy pink diamonds and, on the fontanel, 1,023 white diamonds. This spectacular memento mori was cast from an original skull that formed part of a 19th-century pathology collection that Hirst acquired some years ago."

("For Heaven's Sake" is something of a companion piece to Hirst's  "For the Love of God," a life-size cast of a mature human skull in platinum covered in diamonds.)

According to a report this week in Britain's Telegraph, a parenting group claims that the art work is offensive to those who have suffered the bereavement of a child.The newspaper quotes the group Netmums as saying that the artist "may not have intended to be insensitive with his new work, but the fact is it will have a profound effect on many people who will find the subject deeply disturbing."

The newspaper also quotes Jude Tyrrell, the director of Science Ltd., Hirst's main art-production company, saying: "Of course it's a delicate subject, but this is from an old collection, which we think is Victorian, and they were obsessed with collecting all sorts of bizarre things."

How do you feel about Hirst's baby skull? Let us know in our poll.

 

 

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-- David Ng

Photo: Damien Hirst's "For Heaven's Sake." Credit: via Bloomberg

 

Comments

[Donald frazell]

Hirst is just a tacky showman, and incredibly unoriginal. The crystal skull could be taken from the last pre-Columbian Indiana Jones movie, or hundreds of years of latin day of the dead art. A real cross section of pregnant woman was done years ago, as part of the plasticized body exhibit that travels to Natural History and Science museums.

He has just learned how to titilate the decadent too rich and too thin crow. Absurdist entertainment with pickled critters that go straight to party houses of the wealthy effette. Ones they ignore as they have dozens more, like Getty did. Its all Saatchi PR, he learned from the masters, as contempt art is entertainment of the decadent set. And irrelevant, boring, and just played out in reality.

art collegia delenda est

[Mallory]

I don't feel that I can make a full judgement of this piece unless I knew where the skull came from...

Was it bought, found? Who's skull is this?

[redfish]

Wheres the poll choice "It's no big deal, but its stupid, like all of Hirst's art, if you even want to call it art"?

[vegasgirl]

Regardless of the skull's origin, it's vulgar to the hilt. Hirst is not a legitimate artist, in my book. A shame that there are so many truly talented painters, sculptors or mixed-media artists who don't get the attention this overrated provocateur does.

[Linda]

THIS IS JUST SICK! The ONLY so called art that I saw that worse was that CROSS in a jar of piss & the so called dust & light exibit... Where are the real artist's. Nowadays it's just TRASH ,,ONLY this is worse than trash....

[william wray]

it's just a cast, not the skull itself. It's not like he killed a baby. The people who mined the diamonds are the exploited.

[Marco]

Shock for the sake of shock? This is not that impressive. Boring really. I would expect this out of a high school art class but if people buy the stuff then good for him.

[william Sweetlove]

This is a " strong" sculpture.
Hirst is the wright man on the wright place.

[jacqueline Tellalian]

what's the big deal, it's just the cast of a skull, not a real one -

[horsesforcourses]

a mountain out of a molehill, provoking feigned outrage from the illiterati.

[Vera Gahal]

I'm not sure what the firestorm of controversy is. It's just a Beadazzled skull. You could make a DIY version with glue, a crapload of rhinestones, and access to the dumpster outside the abortion clinic.

At least Hirst's art symbolically suggests that life is precious.

[Doyle Dean]

I have one thing to say about Damien Hirst's bogus shock "Art" and it is "BOYCOTT" vote with your wallet and do not attend any of his shows!

[Rudy]

Would Hirst do this to the skull of his own deceased child? If the answer is no you have your answer.

[Marlena]

What is the point he is trying to convey? I am really a moron when it comes to art. Nevertheless, I do not find this offensive in anyway - just wondering what it means.

[AimeeX]

Its grotesqueness and gaudiness are the very aspects that make it interesting. It agitates the nerves. I would like a long look at the actual object as I've never seen a "real" "crystal" skull. The platinum and excess of diamonds covering bone are unsettling, but in a compelling way. Good campy macabre art.

[Damien Hirst]

the right way to look at such piece is not to try to understand what it is and how much sense does it make and how meaningful it can be but first of all try to understand what art actually means today and how much sense does it make.

[Donald Frazell]

$ and cents, right? Some people really need to get a life to even attempt to justify any mening in this. Its gaudy decadence for the effette elite's party houses. Dinner gossip, for those whose lives have no meaning.

Can we please seperate visual art into different categories? Applied arts, arts and crafts, fine arts, contempt arts, and creative? Creative the only one thats outlasts fads and transitory fashion. It is the essential. Where do you see that in any of this? it exists, but ignored as the threat it is to those who patronize this trash. Aint no Cezanne coming out of this mental midgetry.

Save the spiritual Watts Towers(Nuestro Pueblo), tear down the decadent Ivories.

[John]

Reminds me of this left outside the Damien Hirst show in London a few years back in the trash...

http://www.laurakeeble.com/forgotten-something/26726_forgotten-something.html

[zygion]

Wasteful and totally artistically uninteresting.

[Natacha]

As I yawn with the (non)excitement of Hirst's gimmick filled art in my lifetime...another attempt at celebrity art spectacles...soooo boring. Time to move on to much better things.