Damien Hirst £50m Diamond Skull

An artists comes up with the idea of an art piece. The craft (and artistry) of this art is MORE respectable if the artist actually does it, no doubt. Maybe we generally just respect the artist LESS if he/she has a factory or assistant do it? Yet, in this day and age I believe people respect entrepreneurs and business minded people very much. It is a capitalist nation after all. I firmly believe hiring a firm or company to manufacture your work, or having an assistant to make your work for you only adds to the respect factor by viewers that was originally missing by the artist not actually fabricating the piece. We all love people who figure out how to be famous, make lots and lots of money and have people working for them. It is a status issue as well..


This video was saying that Hirst was making a comment about money and art and how ridiculous extremely expensive art and art making is. If that is what you get out of it, then fine. Is it a great piece of art? I believe it is because it gets so much attention, everyone can relate to it in some way; everyone has a skull, which reminds all of us of our mortality, and everyone understands the power of money. It also receives so much attention and raises so many questions that do not have answers which keeps it an active piece even currently. It was made when the stock market was raging and there was a lot of money in the arts.