For Heaven's Sake

For Heaven's Sake was produced for "Damien Hirst: Forgotten Promises," the inaugural exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery, Hong Kong, in 2011. The book, titled after the artwork For Heaven's Sake, 2008, includes full-color plates of the work, 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 and 1,023 white diamonds on the fontanel was shown for the first time. Also included are eight 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 Damien Hirst is quoted as saying: "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." 

The book includes a short text by curator, writer, and critic Francesco Bonami, published in both Chinese and English.