I know it’s old news by now, but I keep continually contemplating the recent record-breaking sale of Damien Hirst’s diamond encrusted skull. Selling for an unheard of $100 million, I can’t quite decide how I feel about this. I think for the most part it makes me angry, since someone was stupid enough to purchase something merely ornamental for about four times what it cost to produce. There has been a lot of discussion in the news concering the artist’s “message concerning consumerism and conspicuous consumption” but I think the sheer selfishness of the act puts a damper on the aforementioned message.
I don’t think I would still be mulling this over if I hadn’t run into a similar, though less pricey, conundrum in Vogue magazine. In the fashion magazine’s review of a recent ehibition, the artist Urs Fischer was mentioned. Fischer made life-size wax sculptures of women with wicks like giant candles (”What if the phone rings?”), that were lit during the show’s open hours and had to be reconstituded every time they were melted- at a cost of $60,000 each time! In this case it is not money that is the root of the message, but rather just an aspect of the process; and yet to me it seems to raise the same kinds of questions. Just what the hell is someone’s personal message (vendetta?) really worth?
