A deluxe version of death

When Hamlet finds Yorick’s skull, in the famous Shakespeare’s tragedy, he starts asking himself if life is worth the effort and pain, especially in consideration of the fact that everyone of us is destinated to become dust.  If Hamlet  found Damien Hirst’s skull, instead of Yorick’s, maybe his point of view would’ve been less pessimistic.

“For The Love Of God” is a human skull replica, cast in platinum and encrusted with diamonds, made by Hirst in 2007, and it’s one of the most chattered about piece of contemporary art nowadays.  It contains 32 platinum plates with 8,601 diamonds, using a rare and magnificent 52 carat pink diamond in the center, studded with 14 pear-shaped diamonds, and it has been sold for £50 million (80.93 million US$) while the true worth of the skull is estimated to be between £7 million and £10 million. In september 2007 the dailymail wrote : "Everyone in the art world knows Hirst hasn't sold the skull. It's clearly just an elaborate ruse to drum up publicity and rewrite the book value of all his other work."  Well, at least this is made with diamond, not human faeces. I spare you the details about the interpretations given for this opera, since my English (at this point you probably already noticed) is yet to be improved!