February 25, 2009

Transfixed by soaring home prices during the housing boom, tens of millions of Americans installed ATM machines in the foyers of their homes to access the cash.  We now know the coin was two sided; heads ostentatious possessions but tails long-term debt.  It turns out there is a big price to pay for thoughtless bling.

Which brings to mind Damien Hirst, a Britartist clever enough to turn an obsession with death into a lucrative career.  He came to international prominence in 1990 when Charles Saatchi, the advertising genius who self-describes as "fantastically rich" climbed out of his green Rolls Royce at a Hirst warehouse show. Mesmerized in front of Hirst's A Thousand Years, a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow's head, Saatchi couldn't write the check fast enough.

Building on the putrefying flesh boom, Hirst went on to dissect whole animals, including sheep and cows.  They sell for millions.  During the financial collapse this past September, Sotheby's sold $198 million of his art, including $20 million for The Golden Calf, an animal with 18-carat gold horns and hooves preserved in formaldehyde.

Sometimes he doesn't cut the animals up.  His The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living is a whole shark floating in a vitrine.  It sold for $12 million in 2004.

In 2006 he showed at the Royal Academy of Arts in London his 35 foot tall Virgin Mother with layers of her body removed to show the fetus, her skull, and some muscles.  He has done three Virgin Mothers.  The one in front of the Lever House on Park Avenue in New York City has colored body parts, which contrast nicely against the seminal glass box.

At the height of the banality bubble in May of 2007, Hirst unveiled with great British pomp the centerpiece of his Beyond Belief show, his much-anticipated For the Love of God.  Unlike Jack Kevorkian who paints using his blood as pigment, Hirst merely collects human remains for inspiration.  He loves skulls.  And why not?  He's got the cash and obviously knows how to work a trend.  Struck by his artistic muse, Hirst got a hankering to cover one from chin to crown with flawless diamonds and see if anyone would buy it.  So he went to none other than her Majesty's (and Madonna's) jeweler, Bentley & Skinner and convinced them to recreate the skull in platinum and adorn it with 8,601 diamonds weighing 1,106 carats.  The center stone alone is 52.4 carrots.  It is a spectacular memento mori, so brilliant that the jewelers had to cover it in black velvet and work through slits to see their work.  It sold for $100 million.

Who knows how much of this art tab we are currently bailing out?

At the risk of sounding apocalyptic, after seven years of the tech bubble and seven years of the housing bubble, we may be heading into seven years of financial draught.  That may well end up being a good thing.  Wiping out trillions of dollars of wealth has a way of clearing the mind. Certainly diminished, America could emerge from this crisis having relearned prudence and responsibility.  There really are, after all, unavoidable financial consequences to how we live our lives.

Great works of art, like the coins we drained out of our homes, are two sided.  They inspire us with carpe diem, or "seize the day", but their flip side, which we like to ignore, is memento mori, or "remember that you must die". Try as we might to cover over our material mortality with glitz, great art reminds us of the fleetingness of earthly vanities.  Ironically, though featured at his Beyond Belief exhibition, For the Love of God helps us see if we need to get beyond anything, it's lifeless, mindless ostentation.  Our hope must lie elsewhere.