Damien Hirst: For Heaven's Sake

For Heaven's Sake was produced for the Damien Hirst: Forgotten Promises inaugural exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, Hong Kong in 2011. The book title, named after the artwork "For Heaven's Sake" (2008), includes full-color plates of the skull, including fabrication shots and installation shots at the Hong Kong exhibition where this life-size human baby skull cast in platinum and covered in 8,128 pavé-set perfect diamonds: 7,105 natural fancy pink diamonds and 1,023 white diamonds on the fontanel was shown for the first time. Also included are 8 unique preliminary drawings by the artist. This spectacular memento mori was cast from an original skull that formed part of a nineteenth-century pathology collection that Hirst acquired some years ago. As Hirst says: "Diamonds are about perfection and clarity and wealth and sex and death and immortality. They are a symbol of everything that's eternal, but then they have a dark side as well."