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Lot Essay
Painted in 2006, Damien Hirst’s Skull and Table is an intimate consideration of aesthetics and mortality. In glossy, painterly brushwork, Hirst has painstakingly depicted a human skull, which he has set atop a plain wood table. The work continues the long tradition of symbolising death with a skull or skeleton, a motif interpreted by artists such as Caravaggio, Hans Holbein, Paul Cézanne, and Andy Warhol, among countless others. Like these earlier depictions, Hirst offers a contemporary memento mori, or a reminder that life is fleeting—a subject that is never far from the artist’s mind. ‘[Death is] just something that inspires me, not something that pulls me down’, he has said. ‘... And every day your relationship with death changes. And every day I sort of feel like I know it more. I’ve always thought about it. Maybe I shouldn’t? I don’t know. We’re here for a good time—not a long time’ (D. Hirst interviewed by A. Haden-Guest, Interview, 23 November 2008).
Skulls have long been a central image for the artist, whose practice has probed representations of death and beauty. The present work was painted contemporaneously to a series of other cranial depictions, including Floating Skull (2006), which was exhibited as part of Hirst’s solo exhibition at The Wallace Collection, London. Most notorious among these interpretations was his 2007 sculpture For the Love of God, a diamond-encrusted platinum skull. For the Love of God presents a transcendent, dazzling vanitas, embodying the inevitability of death and the futility of pleasure. Writing about the sculpture, art historian Rudi Fuchs observes that it ‘represents death as something infinitely more relentless. Compared to the tearful sadness of a vanitas scene, the diamond skull is glory itself. Covered by diamonds … it became an object of eternal life in death, blazing with light, resistant and heroic—yet still unspeakably ambiguous, as Damien Hirst always uncannily succeeds in making ambiguity itself into a seductive, axiomatic image’ (R. Fuchs, ‘Victory Over Decay’, in Beyond Belief, exh. cat. White Cube, London 2007, n. p.).
Hirst rose to prominence in the early nineties as part of the brazen generation of Young British Artists. Their celebrity came quickly, a result of brash tactics, unconventional material choices, and curatorial spectacle. Despite his reputation for unusual media—he has worked with everything from sharks and butterflies to pharmaceuticals and formaldehyde—being a painter has always appealed to Hirst. ‘I suppose it’s that old story of Turner being strapped to a mast during a storm so he could paint it—it’s a romantic thing’, he reflected recently (D. Hirst quoted in C. Ashby, ‘Damien Hirst on painting cherry blossom’, The Guardian, 6 July 2021). Over the past few years, he has decided to make the medium a central focus of his practice; a solo exhibition of his Cherry Blossom canvases is currently on view at the Fondation Cartier in Paris through January 2022. Hirst’s ongoing commitment to painting is evident in the pristine surface of Skull and Table, which becomes a sumptuous reinterpretation of art historical tradition and a thoughtful meditation on the fragility of life.
Skulls have long been a central image for the artist, whose practice has probed representations of death and beauty. The present work was painted contemporaneously to a series of other cranial depictions, including Floating Skull (2006), which was exhibited as part of Hirst’s solo exhibition at The Wallace Collection, London. Most notorious among these interpretations was his 2007 sculpture For the Love of God, a diamond-encrusted platinum skull. For the Love of God presents a transcendent, dazzling vanitas, embodying the inevitability of death and the futility of pleasure. Writing about the sculpture, art historian Rudi Fuchs observes that it ‘represents death as something infinitely more relentless. Compared to the tearful sadness of a vanitas scene, the diamond skull is glory itself. Covered by diamonds … it became an object of eternal life in death, blazing with light, resistant and heroic—yet still unspeakably ambiguous, as Damien Hirst always uncannily succeeds in making ambiguity itself into a seductive, axiomatic image’ (R. Fuchs, ‘Victory Over Decay’, in Beyond Belief, exh. cat. White Cube, London 2007, n. p.).
Hirst rose to prominence in the early nineties as part of the brazen generation of Young British Artists. Their celebrity came quickly, a result of brash tactics, unconventional material choices, and curatorial spectacle. Despite his reputation for unusual media—he has worked with everything from sharks and butterflies to pharmaceuticals and formaldehyde—being a painter has always appealed to Hirst. ‘I suppose it’s that old story of Turner being strapped to a mast during a storm so he could paint it—it’s a romantic thing’, he reflected recently (D. Hirst quoted in C. Ashby, ‘Damien Hirst on painting cherry blossom’, The Guardian, 6 July 2021). Over the past few years, he has decided to make the medium a central focus of his practice; a solo exhibition of his Cherry Blossom canvases is currently on view at the Fondation Cartier in Paris through January 2022. Hirst’s ongoing commitment to painting is evident in the pristine surface of Skull and Table, which becomes a sumptuous reinterpretation of art historical tradition and a thoughtful meditation on the fragility of life.