Damien Hirst - Diamon Skull
He lost me at the butterflies, his latest awful collection that was sold at Sotheby's two summer's ago, and seemingly caused irrevocable damage to the credibility
of the investor value of the Modern Art market, but up to that point, everything that Damien Hirst produced I found thought provoking and inspired. "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" moved me based on the title alone even though I wasn't exactly swooning at pickled animal carcasses. The bejeweled skull, of the infamous 50 million pound price tag, is in my opinion, and at the risk of sounding like a middle aged drag queen, deeeeeviiiiiiinnnnne. Skulls and skeletons aren't just for halloween and pirates apparently. They adorn the fashionable and the hardcore alike; macho, morbid and weirdly beautiful when dripping in diamonds (granted, very few things aren't). The Mexican day of the dead is a riot of artsy celebration of skulls, and skeletons and usually there is something cheerfully gaudy about it. Is it defying our mortality that's behind this fascination? Is it the bravado of courting the emblem of death and decay? I don't pretend to know but there is something cool about skulls, no matter how cliche or over used they seem to be.
"Cat Among the Pigeons"
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