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Year of production:

Black Kites (1997)
For the Love of God (2007)

Materials:

Black Kites Skull and graphite
For the Love of God  Platinum, diamonds, real teeth.

Meaning:

Hirst's piece is ostentatious, extravagant and sarcastic. It is meant to be a joke of its own name and expensive production, it is an open critique of religion and power.
Orozco's piece is dark, it is about the artist's connection with the person who lived once inside the skull. He was trying to recreate a metaphorical skin, a statement about life and existence.

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Both pieces are interventions on a real skull.

Both are applying a general texture to the skull.

Both artists are leaders in the conceptualist art.

Both pieces are related to death.

According to Régis Debray art was born in death. The first piece of art was a skull, recovered with red mud and precious stones instead of eyes. The body was the first object of art. Both pieces contain the whole imagery related to skulls: the XVII century still life Memento mori, allegorical paintings with skulls, candles and hourglasses that remind the viewer about mortality; the mortuary masks decorated with turquoises inside the tombs of the Aztec emperor; the typical image of the Day of the Dead, for in Mexican culture death is not the end of life but the beginning of another kind of life; the myth of the supernatural crystal skull; the eternal “to be or not to be” from Hamlet’s monologue. What is life? What is death? We are all the same inside, behind the skin, behind the eyes, something joins us beyond our personal and cultural beliefs.

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Skull decorated with a chessboard grid drawn with graphite. The piece was produced during a 6 month convalescence lived by the artist. The origin of the skull is uncertain, the race, gender, age or culture of the skull is unknown. The geometric pattern was adapted to highlight the organic surface. Some of the squares are pulled and stretched to exaggerate the curves and spaces.

Gabriel Orozco was born in 1962, Veracruz, Mexico. He explores beauty and politics in everyday objects. Orozco has been well-known since the nineties for his work with painting, drawing and installation. He is considered one of the most influential artists of the 21st century. His artwork is not about big productions but about finding poetry in common things. Many of his pieces were found while he was exploring streets by turning the meaning into something they weren’t before.

Black kites came from the feeling of vulnerability, about the way we just float in life without any clear idea of what we are doing here. It’s a metaphor of human’s journey, peaceful and difficult as a kite guided by the wind. “Yet Orozco’s sinewy network of lines brings the skull to life again, suggesting the thoughts that once filled this shell, or the sensate skin that covered it. Working at the interface between two-dimensional drawing and a three-dimensional object, Orozco draws attention to relationships between a surface and an interior world.” http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/91220.html

According to the artist the production of this piece was an intense experience, to be alone for so many weeks with a human’s head that he perceived as a concentration of time, time with an object that was once alive. This piece would be a combination of abstract art and an object related to men and existence.

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Sculpture.  Platinum skull bejeweled with 8601 diamonds. Belonged to a 30 year-old European man from the XVIII century, the date was established after extensive radiocarbon dating. The skull was purchased in a taxidermy shop in London. The teeth insert in the jaw belonged to the original skull. Commissioned to the jewelers Bentley & Skinner, the forehead has the largest diamond since the Crown Jewels. The production cost was 15 million pounds, sold for 50 million in one of the most controversial auctions in Sotheby's history.

Damien Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol, England. Widely recognized for his contributions in the London art scene in the nineties, he was part of the Young British Artists, known for their conceptual pieces with unusual materials. Highly influenced by Ready-Mades and Pop Art, Hirst is well known for his pristine installations with dead animals, beautifully arranged medicine cabinets and colorful mosaics with butterflies' wings. He is used to working with specialists like jewel makers, taxidermists and engineers. The trace of the artist's hand erased from the surface. Flawless pieces that remind us of our own fragility and decay.

"Alongside their dazzling brilliance and Eucharistic beauty, Hirst’s fascination with diamonds results partly from the mutterings and uncertainty surrounding their inherent worth. In the face of the industry’s ability to establish their irreplaceable value, it becomes necessary to question whether they are just a bit of glass, with accumulated metaphorical significance? Or [whether they] are genuine objects of supreme beauty connected with life. The cutthroat nature of the diamond industry, and the capitalist society which supports it, is central to the work’s concept." http://www.damienhirst.com/for-the-love-of-god

A diamond is a symbol of power and commitment. A shiny object that joins a person's life with another, a symbol of love and fidelity. But it could also be related to religion, greed and death. How many wars were paid-for with diamonds? How many have died for them? Blood diamonds in the hand of a small child in Africa, in the crown of a King, in a cross inside a baroque church.

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Black Kites (1997)

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For the Love of God (2007)