Damien Hirst|Memento

'Memento' gathers three of Hirst's central images of mortality into one set and gives them a single format. Shortly after publishing 'Victory over Death', his etching of the diamond skull, Hirst decided to re-edition it and his earlier skull etchings alongside the butterflies, for which he worked out a completely new set of colours. Remember you must die The title shortens memento mori, the Latin reminder that you must die. The phrase names a long tradition of still lifes in which skulls sit beside flowers, candles and other emblems of brevity. Here the skull and the butterfly share the role: one bare and permanent, the other beautiful and short-lived. The word also carries memory and keepsake, which suits a portfolio that collects images Hirst had already made. The diamond skull The diamond skull is the print form of For The Love Of God (2007), the platinum cast of a human skull set with 8,601 diamonds and real human teeth. In 'Memento' it takes the same format and black ground as the plain skulls, so the jewelled and the bare versions read as one family. The prints are photogravures: photographic images etched into copper and hand-inked onto heavy Arches paper, which gives the blacks the velvet depth of an intaglio print. The surface is flat, so the sparkle of the stones is printed, not present. At auction A single butterfly holds the five-year high. 'Butterfly Blue', numbered 11/30, went for $31,200, roughly £24,000 including fees, in a Sotheby's online sale in New York in July 2024, more than twice its high estimate of $12,000. Before and after 'Memento' closed a run of large skull etchings published by The Paragon Press, from the plain skulls to 'Victory over Death' early in 2008. A year later the skull moved into a different kind of print in The Dead (2009), where Hirst swapped photographic black for flat foil-block colour. The butterflies went the same way, into the foil prints of The Souls (2010).