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Jun. 1st, 2007 11:24 amFascinating.
I wrote a lot about oversculpted skulls in my thesis on masking, because if you trace Western masked tradition back far enough almost every single one can be linked to death ritual (many Asian masked traditions can also be linked to religious ritual, but the link to death in specific is less solid). "Oversculpting" a skull was a method of ancestor-veneration used not only in South American cultures but also in the Middle East and New Guinea. Its variant, the wax death-mask, was part of the funerial "ritual of immortality" that Roman nobles could expect after their death.
Jericho skull oversculpted in plaster | South American skull | Mosaic skull representing Tezcatlipoca | Modern-day (indigenous cultural) Skull Art in New Guinea
Oversculpted skulls are internally cleaned and stripped of flesh and hair, then decorated with plaster, semiprecious stones, gems, beads, or other objects to create a "lifelike" face, including stone or cowrie-shell eyes. These served a variety of purposes across cultures -- primarily to honour the dead, but also to communicate with the supernatural and to ward off evil (as the Gorgoneia faces of ancient Greece did). I started a short-story once about an artist commissioned in someone's will to oversculpt his skull after his death, as a matter of fact...
Hirst's diamond-oversculpted skull is called For The Love Of God, but he hasn't said much about the spiritual research he may or may not have done in regards to his ancient predecessors. The skull itself is not a real skull but a platinum replica of a skull he owns, inlaid over every inch with flawless diamonds. As such is is not a very good oversculpted skull, because the goal is to retain a sense of life in an object of death, but then from reading the article I'm given to understand that Hirst is considered a stunt-artist, so perhaps this is par for the course.
What intrigues me is the fact that he does clearly understand that oversculpting is an ancient tradition, and yet his interpretation of it is entirely materially based. There was, to be sure, an element of materialism in the oversculpting; precious stones could be used, as well as gold and other metals. The primary goal, however, was religious -- the expensive materials used were a tribute to the previous owner of the skull, much like an altar offering, and were intended create an impression of an actual face.
On examination, I find Hirst's link to oversculpture as a tradition to be somewhat specious. His exploration of our relationship to death is interesting, but the reaction to the use of a skull as an aesthetic object is blurred by the materialism associated with it -- if he was aiming for an examination of our relationship to death, more purity of intent could be preserved by oversculpting a real skull using less excess. If he was aiming for an examination of the relationship between death and materialism, the use of an image such as oversculpture, with a long historic tradition, blurs the purity of that. I think an interesting statement could also be made by relating the skull to the blood diamonds of Sierra Leone and other dirty-diamond countries, but that doesn't seem to be something Hirst is interested in.
Right now, what is most highly visible is the price tag and the super-wealthy who are preparing to bid on a fake skull covered in diamonds backed by a patter-man with a reputation more for shock than for any actual artistic sensibility.
Phew. That felt good. All that academigeekery had to go somewhere.
