"For the Love of God" and diamonds

For a long time now, my personal jewelry motto has been that encrusting something with diamonds immediately makes it better. Well I have recently found an example that blows my hypothesis out of the water. It is a work of art (term used loosely here) by acclaimed British artist Damien Hirst entitled “For the Love of God”; which is ironically what popped out of my mouth upon first seeing it.

Photo : Reuters/Prudence Cuming Associates/Handout/Files

For the love of God indeed, one of Hirst’s more controversial pieces, this objet d’art is a life-size casting of an 18^th century human skull done in platinum. The cast was then covered with 8,601 flawless diamonds including a 52.4 carat pink diamond valued alone at $6.3 million. The piece was sold in 2007 for a remarkable $100 million to a consortium of investors which included the artist himself.

The work is supposed to convey feelings about mortality and death as well as be a commentary on market forces. However, all I can think of is that over 8 thousand perfect diamonds, diamonds that could have been lovingly enjoyed by many, or just me, are currently affixed to a platinum skull, complete with teeth. I’m actually kind of surprised that they didn’t add a diamond encrusted grill to the smile. And what a smile, at least the skull looks happy to be here!

Alright, all jesting aside, when I was in Amsterdam last year I was fortunate enough to be able to visit their diamond museum which houses a replica made by Coster diamonds. Essentially, it is the gorilla version of this masterpiece. And it was, I hesitate to say, spectacular. Very few people are ever priveledged to see thousands of diamonds in one place, separate from the crown jewels of course. And these were beautiful diamonds, under perfect sparkle-inducing lights. My only problem was that, as gorgeous and technically astounding as it was, I kept having this niggling sense of reality. The reality that I was, in truth, looking at a very sparkly gorilla.

So what do you think? Is “For the Love of God” just plain wrong, or so wrong it’s right? If you need to see it in person to make the call, the piece will be on display in London from April 4 through September 9 of 2012.