The Grapist: one man's trash

I don't have anything against Damien Hirst. In fact I have a great deal of appreciation for the man, he of the pickled animals and butterfly paintings - less for his work, which runs the gamut from exceptional (see above) to downright unremarkable (someone say spin paintings?), and more for his connection to ad exec cum art collector Charles Saatchi and, by extension, the Y(oung)B(ritish)A(artist)s, a group which includes my dearly beloved Chapman Brothers. It was through Hirst's work (and Saatchi's money) that the YBAs rose to prominence, and for that I must most humbly thank him, but shit, everyone's ripe for a good pranking, right? Anyway, earlier this year, amidst a great deal of publicity, Hirst debuted his newest work, For the Love of God, a platinum skull encrusted with 8,601 diamonds, which he planned to sell for 50 million pounds after exhibition at the Beyond Belief show at Jay Jopling's White Cube gallery.

Excessive, yes, and, well, kind of silly, but in line with the notions of death and (im)permanence that have permeated much of his work, situated in an ever-inflating art market populated by zealous Russian oligarchs with impressively deep pockets and a penchant for visual splendor. So that's my response. However, my response is, well, boring and quite humorless, unlike that of an artist named Laura, who, using 6,522 Swarovski crystals, created a facsimile of Hirst's skull, placed it in a glass case, and...