The Forgotten Vanities: When the Skull Became the Secret Icon of Contemporary Design
Imagine for a moment: you step into a Parisian luxury boutique, and your gaze is immediately drawn to a black silk scarf adorned with a white, bony motif. This is no mere accessory, but Alexander McQueen’s Skull Scarf, sold in the thousands since 2003. A few streets away, in a contemporary art galle
By Artedusa
••18 min read
The Forgotten Vanities: When the Skull Became the Secret Icon of Contemporary Design
Imagine for a moment: you step into a Parisian luxury boutique, and your gaze is immediately drawn to a black silk scarf adorned with a white, bony motif. This is no mere accessory, but Alexander McQueen’s Skull Scarf, sold in the thousands since 2003. A few streets away, in a contemporary art gallery, a work by Damien Hirst glitters with a thousand lights—a human skull encrusted with 8,601 diamonds, titled For the Love of God. Further still, on the walls of Berlin or Tokyo, graffiti by Banksy or Invader play with the same skeletal silhouette, repurposed as a symbol of rebellion or irony. The skull, once a sacred emblem of death and the vanity of earthly pleasures, is everywhere today. But how did this motif, born in the dim workshops of 17th-century Dutch painters, traverse the centuries to become one of the most potent icons of contemporary design? And why this resurgence, in an era that celebrates eternal youth and unbridled consumption?
The Forgotten Roots: When Death Sat at the Tables of Wealthy Merchants
In the 17th century, the United Provinces were a commercial empire in full expansion. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Delft overflowed with gold, spices, and exotic goods brought back by the ships of the Dutch East India Company. Yet, amid this material prosperity, a strange artistic fashion emerged: the vanitas. These still lifes, often small in size, depicted carefully arranged objects—a skull resting on a book, an extinguished candle, a pocket watch, wilted flowers. Their message? A brutal reminder: Memento mori—remember that you will die. And at the center of these compositions, the human skull, polished and lifelike, reigned like a silent warning.
To understand this obsession, one must revisit the religious context of the time. The Netherlands, predominantly Calvinist, rejected the ostentatious opulence of the Catholic Church. Wealth was only tolerated if it served God, not earthly pleasures. The vanitas thus became objects of meditation, almost tools of penance. The painter Harmen Steenwijck, one of the masters of the genre, often placed his skull in the foreground, as if to say: "Look closely, for all this is but dust." In his Vanitas Still Life of 1640, now in the Rijksmuseum, the skull sits beside a nautilus shell (a symbol of life’s fragility) and an extinguished oil lamp (the divine light that fades). Every detail is a metaphor, every object a verdict.
Yet these paintings were not meant for churches, but for bourgeois interiors. They adorned the walls of merchants’ homes—men who, each day, risked their fortunes on the seas. Irony of fate: the more wealth they amassed, the more they purchased works reminding them of their mortality. As if, in this burgeoning capitalist world, the fear of the afterlife served as a counterbalance to the intoxication of profit.
The Art of Painting Bone: When Realism Became an Obsession
If vanitas still fascinate us today, it is largely due to their technical virtuosity. The 17th-century Dutch painters were masters of trompe-l'œil, capable of rendering the texture of a skull with near-surgical precision. Take Pieter Claesz, one of the greatest names in the genre. In his Vanitas Still Life of 1630 (now in the Mauritshuis in The Hague), the skull is not merely placed—it is alive. The raking light highlights every ridge of the bone, every crack, every reflection on the smooth surface. Claesz used a technique called glazing—layers of transparent paint superimposed to create an almost tactile depth.
But what is most unsettling is how these artists played with perspective. In some works, like those of Jacques de Gheyn II, the skull is slightly tilted, as if gazing at the viewer. In others, like Willem Claesz Heda’s, it is half-hidden by a drape, as if to suggest that death is always present, even when unseen. The cast shadows are calculated to the millimeter: an extinguished candle casts a ghostly glow on the skull’s forehead, while a sunbeam through an invisible window illuminates a half-rotten apple.
And then there are the details that send shivers down the spine. In Juan de Valdés Leal’s Finis Gloriae Mundi (1672), housed in Seville’s Hospital de la Caridad, the skull is no longer an inanimate object but a decomposing corpse. The teeth are yellowed, the eye sockets hollow, and a larva seems to crawl along the jawbone. Valdés Leal pushes realism to the point of horror, as if forcing the viewer to confront the inevitable. These painters did not merely represent death—they made it visible, in all its raw materiality.
Today, techniques have changed, but the obsession with detail remains. For For the Love of God, Damien Hirst had a real 18th-century human skull cast before encrusting it with diamonds. The result? A work that sparkles with a thousand lights, yet whose empty eye sockets remind us that beneath the glitter, there is only bone.
Harmen Steenwijck: The Painter Who Sold Sermons in Paint
Among the masters of vanitas, Harmen Steenwijck (1612–1656) holds a special place. Less known than his contemporaries like Pieter Claesz or Willem Kalf, he is nonetheless one of the most fascinating, for his work embodies the tension between morality and aesthetics that runs through the entire genre. Born in Delft, Steenwijck was the son of a still-life painter, but he chose to specialize in a very specific subgenre: vanitas with an explicit message. His paintings did not merely display symbolic objects—they told a story, like visual sermons.
Take his Vanitas Still Life of 1640, now in the Rijksmuseum. At its center, a human skull, polished and almost luminous, rests on an open book. Beside it, an extinguished oil lamp, a nautilus shell, and a pocket watch whose face is turned toward the viewer. Each object has a precise meaning: the book represents human knowledge (vain without faith), the extinguished lamp symbolizes the divine light that fades, and the watch reminds us that time inexorably passes. But what strikes the viewer is the composition. Unlike other painters who scattered objects randomly, Steenwijck arranged them in a perfect diagonal, as if guiding the viewer’s gaze toward the skull. It is a staging, almost a visual trap.
Yet Steenwijck was not merely a moralist. His paintings were also demonstrations of technical virtuosity. In another of his works, An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life (1640), he painted a terrestrial globe balanced on a book, with a skull precariously perched atop. The realism is such that one can make out the reflections on the globe, the pages of the book, and even the veins of the skull. But behind this technical prowess lies a message: even the greatest human knowledge (the globe) is but dust in the face of death.
Ironically, Steenwijck died young, at just 44. No one knows from what, but his paintings have endured through the centuries. Today, his vanitas are studied as masterpieces of the Baroque, but also as objects of morbid fascination. And if you look closely, you’ll see that his skull in Vanitas Still Life almost seems to smile.
The Skull and Its Doubles: When Art Plays with the Reflections of Death
Why has the skull, more than any other symbol of vanitas, survived through the centuries? The answer may lie in its duality: it is at once familiar and monstrous, universal and deeply personal. In art, this duality has given rise to infinite interpretations, from the sacred to the profane.
Take Hans Holbein the Younger and his famous The Ambassadors (1533). In the foreground, an anamorphic skull—so distorted as to be nearly unrecognizable—only reveals itself when the viewer stands to the side of the painting. This detail, often interpreted as a hidden memento mori, is also a technical feat. Holbein plays with perspective to remind us that death is always present, even when unseen. It is a visual metaphor for vanity: no matter how powerful the ambassadors depicted (one a bishop, the other a diplomat), their glory is but an illusion.
Three centuries later, Pablo Picasso took up the motif, but with a very different intent. In Head of a Dead Man (1943), painted during the German Occupation, the skull is no longer a philosophical symbol but an accusation. The features are distorted, almost grotesque, as if death itself were a caricature. Picasso, who lived through the war firsthand, turned the memento mori into a political weapon. The skull was no longer a reminder of individual mortality, but of collective barbarism.
And then there are the contemporary subversions. Jean-Michel Basquiat, in Skull (1981), reduced the skull to a series of childlike, almost naive strokes. Yet behind this apparent simplicity lies a reflection on Black mortality in 1980s America. Basquiat’s skull is not a warning but a cry. More recently, Takashi Murakami transformed the skull into a pop object with his 727 (1996), where smiling skulls float in a colorful, kawaii universe. Here, death is no longer frightening—it is cute.
Each era reinvents the skull in its own image. In the 17th century, it was a reminder of human fragility. In the 20th, it became a symbol of rebellion. In the 21st, it is both a fashion accessory and an internet meme. But in every case, it remains a mirror—a mirror that relentlessly reflects our own finitude.
From Memento Mori to Luxury Logo: How the Skull Conquered the World
How did a religious symbol, once confined to churches and cabinets of curiosities, become one of the most ubiquitous motifs in contemporary design? The answer lies in one word: secularization. Over the centuries, the skull shed its sacred dimension to become a desacralized object, ripe for reappropriation by every cultural movement.
In the 19th century, with the rise of Romanticism, the skull became an accessory of melancholy. Poets like Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe turned it into a symbol of beauty in decay. In Les Fleurs du Mal, Baudelaire wrote: "Death consoles us and makes us live." The skull was no longer a warning but a muse. This Romantic fascination with death found its way into art, with painters like Arnold Böcklin and his Isle of the Dead (1880), where skulls litter the ground of an oneiric landscape.
But it was in the 20th century that the skull underwent its true metamorphosis. With the emergence of countercultures, it became a symbol of rebellion. In the 1970s, the punk movement seized the motif: the Sex Pistols, the Misfits, and later Marilyn Manson turned it into an anti-establishment banner. The skull was no longer a reminder of death but a fuck you to society. At the same time, the tattoo world adopted it: sailors got skull tattoos to ward off death at sea, while bikers made it a symbol of freedom.
Then came the turn of the 2000s. With Alexander McQueen, the skull moved from the streets to the runway. His Skull Scarf, launched in 2003, became a global phenomenon, worn by stars like Kate Moss and Johnny Depp. Suddenly, the skull was no longer marginal—it was luxury. Streetwear brands like Supreme and Off-White appropriated it, turning the rebellious symbol into a commercial logo. Today, skulls are everywhere: on Nike sneakers, vodka bottles, Rolex watches. Even IKEA sells skull-shaped mirrors (SKALLIG).
Yet behind this rampant commercialization, the skull retains some of its subversive power. In 2017, Banksy subverted the motif in a work titled Girl with Balloon (Skull), where a little girl reaches for a skull-shaped balloon. The message? Even innocence is threatened by death. More recently, designers like Virgil Abloh (Off-White) have used the skull to evoke darker themes, such as the climate crisis or social inequality.
The skull has become a cultural chameleon: it can be elegant, rebellious, ironic, or political. But one question lingers: by becoming so ubiquitous, has it not lost some of its symbolic power? Or, on the contrary, is it this very ubiquity that allows it to remain relevant, like a mirror held up to each era?
Skull Stories: The Chilling Anecdotes Behind the Bones
Behind every famous skull lies a story, often stranger than fiction. Did you know, for example, that Alexander McQueen’s Skull Scarf almost never existed? In 2003, the British designer, known for his dark and theatrical creations, sketched a skull motif inspired by Dutch vanitas. But his team hesitated: "It’s too morbid, no one will wear it." McQueen insisted, and the result became one of the most copied accessories in fashion history. Today, knockoffs of the scarf sell for a few euros in Bangkok markets, while the original fetches thousands of dollars.
Another chilling anecdote: the skull in Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God (2007) is not a cast but a real one. Hirst bought an 18th-century human skull from a London shop specializing in medical curiosities. The price? £14,000. He then had it encrusted with 8,601 diamonds, at a total cost of £14 million. The work, sold for £50 million to a consortium of investors (including Hirst himself), sparked controversy: some saw it as a masterpiece, others as a cynical provocation. But the most unsettling part is the rumor surrounding the piece. According to some, the skull is cursed—a legend fueled by the fact that several people involved in its creation suffered accidents or premature deaths.
And what of Yorick’s skull, immortalized by Shakespeare in Hamlet? In 2008, British archaeologists announced they had found the remains of a man who may have inspired the character. Buried in a Suffolk cemetery, the skull showed signs of syphilis, a disease that deformed facial bones—just as Shakespeare described. Coincidence? Perhaps. But the story adds a macabre touch to one of literature’s most famous memento mori.
On a lighter note, did you know that the sugar skulls of Mexico’s Día de los Muertos almost disappeared? In the 19th century, Spanish colonial authorities tried to ban the tradition, deeming it "pagan." But the Mexicans resisted, transforming the skulls into festive, colorful objects. Today, these edible skulls have become a global symbol, adopted by brands like Starbucks and Disney. Irony of history: a symbol of cultural resistance has become a mass-consumption product.
Finally, here’s a more personal anecdote. In 2012, London’s Wellcome Collection organized an exhibition titled Death: A Self-Portrait. Among the works displayed was a human skull covered in gold leaf, created by an anonymous 17th-century artist. During the exhibition, visitors reported feeling a strange presence near the piece. Some even swore they saw the skull move. The curators eventually installed a surveillance camera… and discovered that the "movements" were simply caused by vibrations from visitors’ footsteps. Yet the story persisted. Proof that the skull, even as an inanimate object, retains a power of fascination that borders on the supernatural.
Where to See Skulls Today: A Guide for Symbol Hunters
If you wish to follow the trail of vanitas and modern skulls, here’s an itinerary that will take you from the most prestigious museums to the most underground galleries.
Let’s start in Amsterdam, the birthplace of vanitas. At the Rijksmuseum, you’ll find several masterpieces of the genre, including Pieter Claesz’s Vanitas Still Life (1630) and Harmen Steenwijck’s An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life (1640). The museum regularly organizes guided tours on the theme of death in Dutch art. A short walk away, the Museum Het Rembrandthuis offers workshops on 17th-century painting techniques—an opportunity to discover how these artists brought life (or rather, death) to their skulls.
Next, head to Paris, where the Louvre houses one of the finest collections of French and Flemish vanitas. Don’t miss Philippe de Champaigne’s Vanity (1644), where a skull rests on an open book, surrounded by wilted flowers. For a more contemporary experience, visit the Fondation Louis Vuitton, which in 2022 exhibited a series of works by Damien Hirst, including skulls covered in butterflies—a metaphor for life’s fragility.
If you prefer skulls in flesh and bone, head to Seville, Spain. At the Hospital de la Caridad, you can admire Juan de Valdés Leal’s Finis Gloriae Mundi and In Ictu Oculi (1672). These two works, commissioned to remind visitors of life’s brevity, are among the most macabre in art history. The skull in Finis Gloriae Mundi is so realistic that one can still see the yellowed teeth and hollow eye sockets. A visual warning that has lost none of its power.
For contemporary design enthusiasts, London is a must. At Tate Modern, you can see Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God—or at least a replica, as the original is in a private collection. Nearby, Alexander McQueen’s boutique on Old Bond Street still offers the famous Skull Scarf, along with other vanitas-inspired accessories. If you’re on a tighter budget, head to Dr. Martens, where skull-patterned boots have become a classic.
Finally, for a more immersive experience, head to Mexico during Día de los Muertos (November 1–2). In the streets of Mexico City, you’ll see altars decorated with calaveras (sugar skulls), marigolds, and candles. The markets overflow with ceramic, papier-mâché, and even chocolate skulls. For a darker touch, visit the Museum of Medicine at UNAM, where pre-Columbian skulls and ancient surgical instruments are on display.
And if you want to bring back a souvenir? In Tokyo’s Harajuku district, the 6%DOKIDOKI boutique offers kawaii skull-themed accessories—perfect for those who want to combine death and cuteness. In New York, the MoMA Design Store sells vanitas-inspired objects, like skull-shaped mirrors or "memento mori" scented candles.
The Skull Is Dead, Long Live the Skull: Why This Symbol Will Never Disappear
In 2024, the skull is everywhere. It adorns the clothes of influencers, the screens of video games, the walls of art galleries. It is both a fashion accessory, a political symbol, and an internet meme. Yet behind this omnipresence lies a question: does the skull still hold meaning, or has it become an empty motif, stripped of its symbolic weight?
To answer, we must return to its origins. In the 17th century, the skull was a warning. Today, it has become a mirror—but one that reflects the anxieties of our time. In a world marked by climate crises, pandemics, and wars, the skull reminds us that death is never far away. But unlike the Dutch vanitas, which contrasted material wealth with life’s fragility, contemporary skulls are often subverted. They can be ironic (as in memes), political (as in Banksy’s work), or purely aesthetic (as in McQueen’s designs).
Take Virgil Abloh, the late artistic director of Louis Vuitton. In his 2018 Off-White collection, he used skulls to evoke the Mediterranean migrant crisis. The motifs, inspired by vanitas, were accompanied by phrases like "TEMPORARY" or "IMAGINE," reminding us that human life is both precious and fleeting. Here, the skull is no longer a religious symbol but a tool for social critique.
Another example: NFT skulls. In 2021, artist Beeple sold a digital work titled Everydays: The First 5000 Days for $69 million. Among the recurring motifs in this mosaic were skulls—sometimes realistic, sometimes stylized. For Beeple, the skull is a metaphor for the fragility of the digital world. In an era where everything can be copied, altered, or erased with a click, the skull reminds us that even data has an end.
And then there’s the nostalgic aspect. The skulls of the 2020s are often tinged with retro aesthetics: vaporwave, cyberpunk, grunge revival. As if, by reinterpreting the symbols of the past, we seek to give meaning to an increasingly uncertain present.
So, is the skull still a memento mori? Yes, but not as before. Today, it is both a reminder of our mortality and a way to play with it. It is serious and ironic, sacred and profane, elegant and vulgar. In this, it perfectly embodies our era: a world where death is both denied (with medical advances, social media erasing signs of aging) and omnipresent (with health crises, wars, climate disasters).
And perhaps that is why the skull will never disappear. Because it is us—our fears, our desires, our contradictions. Because it is both a warning and an invitation: look closely, for all this is but dust… but what beautiful dust.
The Forgotten Vanities: When the Skull Became the Secret Icon of Contemporary Design | Art History
