Art as a Reflex to the Terror of Death and Damien Hirst’s $100 million diamond skull.

“For the Love of God” Sculpture by Damien Hirst 2007

“The knowledge of death is reflexive and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes later, a few seconds of anguish, and it's over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun filled days - that's something else.” (Becker)

Art is a reflex of this terror. 

$100 million for a diamond skull that cost $23.6 million to make. If Damien Hirst’s “For the Love of God” is one thing: it would be controversial. Critics, such as Jonathan Jones, claim that “the most honest work of art of the first decade of this century was obviously Hirst's diamond death's head.” While, on the other hand, critics such as Cohen believe that Mr. Hirst “isn’t criticizing the excess, not even ironically, but rolling in it and loving it. The sooner he goes out of fashion, the better.” To me the diamonds are a protest against our own creatureliness-- literally covering over our own rotting decay.  The eternal diamonds will forever mock the skulls yellowing teeth and laugh at our false victory and inability to outlast them. 

Society praises the artist because he lives forever. Not only is the substance of Hirst’s work a denial of the creatures we really are, but so is the production of his work itself. While religion promises its followers immortality in heaven, Art promises its artist’s immortality in the wall space of museums.  Both deny our human condition. Both are an attempt to transcend our own death in symbolic ways. Art is one of the greatest immortality projects of all and In the words of Damion Hirst himself “I don’t see what else you can spend your money on. If you want to own things, art is a pretty good bet. Buy art, build a museum, put your name on it, let people in for free. That’s as close as you can get to immortality.”