“Every artwork that has ever interested me is about death.”

—Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst’s Self Portrait L. of 2008 represents a significant moment in his exploration of life, death, and the human body – recurring themes in his oeuvre. Renowned for his explorations of mortality, the skull is a recurring motif in his work and was central, for instance, in his earlier series entitled For the Love of God of 2007. However, Self Portait L. is markedly different as it shifts from spectacle to introspection. The artwork consists of two x-ray scans of Hirst's own skull, illuminated on a lightbox, combining the motif of the skull with the genre of self-portrait. While the small patient labels identify the scans as belonging to Hirst, the images nonetheless reduce his identity to pure biology, stripping away personal traits and emotions so that just bones and cartilage remain. It is the clinical, detached precision of the medical scan that dominates, underscoring the tension between life and death, identity and anonymity.

Hirst’s choice of the skull as a motif is not just a nod to his own mortality but also ties into a broader historical tradition in art – the memento mori, a reminder of death’s inescapability. From seventeenth century still lifes such as Pieter Claesz’s Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill (1628) to modern works like Vincent van Gogh’s Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette (1885-86), the skull has been a constant symbol of the fragility of life throughout art history. In Self Portrait L., Hirst brings the motif into the present, reframing it in the context of modern medicine and technology. The scans highlight the scientific inevitability of death, yet at the same time, the lightbox brings the x-rays to life, inviting a paradoxical meditation on vitality and decay.

Self Portrait L. mirrors Hirst’s broader belief that science has, in many ways, replaced religion as a source of hope and guidance in the modern world. As Hirst himself put it, “Science is the new religion for many people... it provides the glimmer of hope that maybe it will be all right in the end.” In this work, the x-ray – a tool of medical science – acts as both a diagnostic tool and a symbol of faith. The scans reveal the artist’s skull with cold, clinical accuracy, offering an image of the self reduced to its core, stripped of individuality. Nonetheless, this stark representation also provides a sense of reassurance: science gives us the means to look inside ourselves, to understand our bodies, and to hold onto the hope that this understanding will help us navigate the complexities of life and death.

“There are four important things in life: religion, love, art and science. At their best, they’re all just tools to help you find a path through the darkness. None of them really work that well, but they help.”

—Damien Hirst

By using his own head as the subject, Hirst personalises the memento mori tradition, while also suggesting the futility of trying to escape death. The portrait, devoid of life except for faint identifiers such as dental fillings and the hospital labels identifying Hirst as the patient, offers an almost spiritual reflection on the body’s impermanence. Through the lens of modern science, Hirst’s skull becomes not just a symbol of mortality but also of the strange comfort we find in understanding it. In this way, Self Portrait L. balances on the edge between art, science, and religion – reflecting our collective search for meaning in a world increasingly dominated by the promises and limitations of medicine.