Scott Penney

Thoughts on a diamond-studded skull by Damien Hirst

Scott Penney

Regard this diamond skull that artist Damien Hirst construed, derived from diamonds hard-wired on a steel mesh frame, cornrows arrayed as exactly as those in the garden of Cyrus— regard the value of even those most tearless of eye-sockets, edgy hollows lachrymose with nothing but art-world track-light.

Artist Damien Hirst has made a masterpiece no one can afford— not even the most star- or diamond-studded semi-celebrity. No insurance plan nor all of Lloyd's can underwrite the skull suspended in the Plexiglas cage of the London gallery

Each diamond on the little skull refracts a point of light cupping in its precious radius another viewer, eye that altering all beams back each gaze that hails it, each flashbulb-popping camera angle. What paparazzi member is not astonished, awed?

Each eye-beam joins each beam of light each discrete gem bends— grin that gapes back at its buyer wannabe, each inert eye-socket invested with millions, world of mineral wealth in a worm-hole.

Such the conceits the brain-vault beams to the absent cortex. Pièce de résistance: being pinned to a pedestal. And all along the thoughts a botoxed skull beams back: regard my void.