Previous | Next :: For The Love Of God : Damien Hirst's Retrospective Show Tate Modern : London | April 11, 2012, 8:18 pm

I had a little bit of time to chill today....... so I rolled over to Tate Modern to take in the Damien Hirst show......... I wanted to see it partly because I really wanted to see ' For The Love of God ' the human skull cast in platinum and inlaid with over 8 thousand perfect diamonds......... It was as I kind of expected : totally incredible ..... Awesome !!! as many of my American friends would say ....... Sure there is all that : Can it be right?............ To create a piece of art work of diamonds and platinum (and human teeth) valued at $75 million ? ........... but put aside any politics and just look at it ........ and just feel its effect on you ..............

It's a pretty mesmerizing thing ......... with the light constantly shimmering off of this perfect representation of death.................. It is contained in a dark black box of an apparently sealed cube room in the middle of the giant Turbine Hall at the Tate....... people are gathered around it the way they gather round The Black Kaaba Stone in Mecca ........ but this black sarcophagus guarded by muscle bound men in black suits with earpieces......... contains only blackness when you first enter...... then at its very center a glass cube ........ within the glass the perfect vision of death glinting and glowing in its amazing beauty. Colors from white.... shards of light..... glinting and gleaming constantly sparkling from the white diamonds causing almost a sensation that the head is turning ........ The piece dominates....... Everything else is blackness..........

You are not allowed to photograph it of course ....... A man was being dragged out by the black suited body guard types for the offense of photography at one point while I was there ......... I can't help thinking he should get himself a Sony NEX5 a slightly less obtrusive camera very useful for 'No Photography' situations.... well I find it useful myself ..... See above.

My friend who is a big wheel in the art world had warned me she found the whole show slightly without teeth ........ that the shark was yawning and worse she warned me that 'For The Love of God' is not so great in the flesh (or lack of flesh) as it were......... I always find her totally brilliant on all aspects of art ...... so I was sort of expecting to agree ......... and yet I was conflicted..... as I had always thought I liked the diamond skull without ever actually having seen it for real .........

I was seriously braced for disappointment............ instead I found it totally amazing ........ and 'For the love of God' can actually be viewed without charge ....... the rest of the show you have to pay to see ....... so if you are short of cash ....... you should feast your eyes on the $75 million piece of art ....... yeah..... try not to get too done in by the political dichotomy in that situation ....... just look at it as it is...... in my view an amazing mesmerizing creation .........

Cheers Jez XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

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