Art or Entrepreneurship?

Here is one example of today's great art.

Would you love to own this?

This skull by artist Damien Hirst, represents the most costly piece of modern art ever created. With a price tag of 100 million dollars, this skull is covered with over 8,601 pavé diamonds (the big pink diamond in the forehead is 2 million dollars alone).

It is a platinum cast of a skull from an actual person who lived between 1720 and 1810 and whose teeth are still showing but the rest of his head is covered in diamonds.

Is it morally ethical to use a human skull this way?

With his bones exposed and used this way, It is surly a privacy issue, and an exploitation of the dead. I am certain the dead man didn't give the artist permission to use his skull for profit and fame. Hirst writes that the diamonds he chose were "ethically sourced", whatever that means. So, desecrate the skull but I guess that getting the diamonds from an ethical source gives him the ability to tap-dance all the way to the bank without any guilt.

The actual cost for creating this sculptured piece of jewelry was just 20 million giving Hirst a cool 80 million dollar profit. Is this art or is it just a very clever entrepreneur who produces art solely for profit. Who would want it except the investment world of art or some museum. After the shock and awe it's value is really in question. The whole art world is being scammed.

So what is art?

One of the most meaningful classes I took to earn my degree in art was the Philosophy of Art 101. My rather brilliant Baylor Professor stood up on the first day of class, and made a statement that has stayed with me all of my life and caused me to think deeply about my chosen profession. (I deem any professor "brilliant" if I still remember what I was taught after all these years.)

That day he said something like this. "What is art?" .... A long dramatic pause and a little impish grin for his retorical question. "Art can not be defined, however, this semester we are going to define what art is. We will study what artists, philosophers, sociologists, psychiatrists like Freud, writers, famous art critics, and a host of other great thinkers and what even the governments believe on the topic: 'What is Art.' You will over the next few months attempt to define the meaning of art. On the last day of class you will discover that art is impossible to define." With that he closed the book and dismissed the class.

I was a stunned art major. I said to myself, "Well, if I can't define art why on earth am I an art major?" Maybe that is why I went into graphic art and advertising instead of fine art.

Now, after a 30-year career, I am turning from graphic art and advertising to fine art. Once again, I have been thinking about that class. I am glad that professor proposed this dilemma but I think now -- no longer an impressionable kid -- I believe he was right and wrong. Art today is broad when once it was narrow.

The "art" that artists like Hirst is producing just may be the art of entrepreneurship.

This is art. Would you want to own this and display this in your home?

This is what I would give the rest of my life to accomplish. Profits are not the motivator.


Johannes Vermeer's "Girl with Pearl".