$98 million skull

girldorksrule · Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 10:51 pm Post subject: $98 million skull

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Damien Hirst, former BritArt bad boy whose works infuriate and inspire in equal measure, did it again on Friday with a diamond-encrusted platinum cast of a human skull priced at a cool $98 million.

The skull, cast from a 35-year-old 18th-century European male, is coated with 8,601 diamonds, including a large pink diamond worth more than $8 million in the center of its forehead.

"It shows we are not going to live for ever. But it also has a feeling of victory over death," Hirst said as the sparkling skull was unveiled to the public for the first time amid tight security at central London's White Cube gallery.

major.tom · Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 12:27 am Post subject:

faceless · admin Joined: 25 Apr 2006

I think it's a pretty good lump of art myself - not sure about the price though. The actual worth of the materials is only about 12 million quid or something, so I'm surprised that anyone thinks that one piece of work by one living artist is worth 38 million. Nobody's time is worth that much!

eefanincan · Admin Joined: 29 Apr 2006 Location: Canada

Well put, Face. I think if it's just art that he wants to do, he could have achieved exactly the same effect with rhinestones or crystals. Anyone who buys that thing should be shot for spending that amount of money on something so useless.

faceless · admin Joined: 25 Apr 2006

Artist Damien Hirst's latest work is a diamond encrusted skull already reserved for £50 million. It is entitled For the ove of God, apparently the exclamation his mother gave upon hearing about the project.

The human skull, that of a mid-thirty-year-old man was not merely encrusted with precious stones... but remade entirely. 32 platinum plates were made from its cast...

...before being hand-lasered with thousands of holes. The diamonds were then set individually into each hole. It took 8,601 flawless pavé diamonds to finish the piece.

'It's the maximum I can throw against death; perhaps that's crass, to pit money against death, but it all depends on what it does visually,' says Hirst. The original teeth were removed, 'lightly cleaned'...then embedded in the diamond and platinum mandibles.

The large, pear-shaped diamond is light fancy pink, flawless...surrounded by 14 graduated pear-shaped diamonds, all D-colour flawless. So many diamonds were used for For the Love of God that it became difficult to source them on the world market, as the price rose.

The finished article...

www.telegraph.co.uk
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I wonder how long that took?