When a Piece of Art Takes it Too Far

While I’ve always been more of a literature girl, I always had an appreciation for the visual arts. Visual art serves as a medium for an artist to pour their soul and livelihood into, a symbolic representation of how they view the world. At least, that’s what art is supposed to be. 

There have been many cases when art has been the face of controversy. Take the piece, My Bed, for example. My Bed was an exhibition featured in the Tate Britain by Tracey Emin in 1999. The exhibition displayed the artist’s own unmade bed, decorated with bodily fluids, condoms, open-wine bottles, and other taboo artifacts. The piece elicited disgust and critique from onlookers who claimed the messy bed was too vulgar to be considered artwork. Others disagreed, claiming the confessional piece was a perfect representation of people’s most intimate spaces and how they reflect feelings of depression, failure, and imperfection in the life of the inhabitant. 

Artworks like My Bed show that art doesn’t need to be conventionally beautiful to hold artistic value. For something to be considered art, it must carry meaning or intention behind its creation. This broad definition allows artists significant freedom in shaping their work, which raises the question: should there be boundaries on what can be defined as art?

My answer? Yes. Absolutely yes. In fact, there is one sculpture that is so utterly offensive and morally reprehensible that it should have never been allowed to see the light of day, let alone be considered a piece of art. This piece is Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God. 

To the average viewer, For the Love of God might appear similar to a Halloween decoration. 

Built in 2007 and featured in the famed art gallery “The White Cube,” the sculpture takes on the form of a human skull bedazzled in thousands of diamonds. Due to the colossal amount of diamonds and how much they were worth, Hirst’s piece ended up valuing at around 15 million pounds (19.6 million U.S. dollars). 

Although its immense net worth grabbed many news headlines, what made the piece so controversial was it was made with a REAL human skull that the artist bought from a taxidermist. While art often challenges norms and explores uncomfortable truths, Hirst’s use of a human skull crosses an ethical boundary. This skull belonged once to a living person, and now their remains are part of an overpriced decoration, covered in diamonds and turned into a showpiece. It’s hard not to feel weird about the fact that someone’s skull is being sold as a luxury item, like it’s no different from any other material.

Critics of Hirst argue that For the Love of God exploits death in a way that feels cold and callous. Instead of being a meaningful reflection on mortality, it feels like the piece just wants to show off how expensive and flashy it is. The diamonds covering the skull don’t add to any deep message—they seem to distract from it. It shifts the conversation from the human experience to the idea of wealth and excess, which is where the whole thing starts to feel hollow.

This brings up a bigger question: when does art stop being about genuine expression and start becoming an exercise in extravagance? Hirst’s skull is part of a trend in modern art where shock value and monetary worth seem to be more important than any real emotional or philosophical message. Yes, art should push boundaries, but it shouldn’t lose its humanity in the process. 

When talking about decorating the skull with diamonds, Hirst was hesitant at first, but went through with it anyway, rationalizing, “Death is such a heavy subject, it would be good to make something that laughed in the face of it.” But instead of laughing in the face of death, the piece feels like it trivializes it. Rather than offering a thoughtful commentary on mortality, For the Love of God comes across as empty and superficial, using excess to distract from a lack of deeper meaning. 

There’s a fine line between art that challenges people and art that just straight-up offends them. For the Love of God walks that line, but not in a good way. The reaction it provokes isn’t because it’s revealing something deep about life or death—it’s because it feels like a weird, grotesque use of someone’s remains for attention. At the end of the day, this piece feels more like a statement about the artist’s ego and the commercialization of death than anything meaningful.

So, while artists should indeed be free to express themselves, there are ethical responsibilities that come with that freedom. Art should elevate, challenge, and inspire—not dehumanize or exploit for the sake of shock or profit. And in my opinion, For the Love of God fails this critical test.