Damien Hirst’s latest artwork is this life-size platinum skull encrusted with 8,601 fine diamonds. The sculpture, titled “For The Love of God,” will likely sell for as much as $100 million, making it the most expensive piece of art ever made. the White Cube gallery in USA is selling a number of special limited edition prints of the work, with prices from £900 rising to £10,000 for a piece sprinkled with diamond dust.
Damien Hirst, the famous pickler of sharks and bovine bisector, regularly produces artwork based on the concept of death. This latest piece, was cast from an 18th-century skull he bought in London. “I remember thinking it would be great to do a diamond one — but just prohibitively expensive,” he recalls. “Then I started to think — maybe that’s why it is a good thing to do. Death is such a heavy subject, it would be good to make something that laughed in the face of it.”
Hirst, who financed the piece himself, watched for months as the price of international diamonds rose while the Bond Street gem dealer Bentley & Skinner tried to corner the market for the artist’s benefit. Given the ongoing controversy over blood diamonds from Africa, “For the Love of God” now has the potential to be about death in a more literal way.
“That’s when you stop laughing,” Hirst says. “You might have created something that people might die because of. I guess I felt like Oppenheimer or something. What have I done? Because it’s going to need high security all its life.”
Read more about Damian Hirsts Diamond Encrusted Skull here.