Damien Hirst’s diamond skull may–one day–be the most enduring symbol of the first decade of the decadent 21st Century. To get there will require some aggressive and continued promotion which is Hirst’s forte. Timed for the exhibition of the skull in Florence, the Financial Times interviewed Hirst and discovered his plans for a sculpture show in the future:
A ticket to see the diamond skull at the Palazzo Vecchio is €10: the visitor also gets to see the palace museum. In the first weekend some 1,500 people a day took the tour, an increase of 40 per cent. An Italian company, Arthemisia, making a first foray into contemporary art exhibition, is handling the €1.6m costs and is expecting 210,000 visitors. Hirst doesn’t get a fee. […] But he is planning a big sculpture show in five years. As usual, the work will be made at the Pangolin Foundry in Gloucestershire and he already has a title – Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable – “a kind of fantasy on a ship that went down”. My interest is aroused: this sounds like Hirst at his imaginative, outrageous best. I tell him he’s always been good at titles – “I should’ve been a poet,” he laughs.
‘You Start to Think You’re Midas’ (Financial Times)
