Damien Hirst's "For the Love of God" Diamond Skull

by Sandy Maple (RSS feed)
May 18th 2007 at 6:25PM

Last year, British artist Damien Hirst promised to create the most expensive work of art ever with "For the Love of God". Now, he is set to reveal this work next month at the appropriately named Beyond Belief exhibition at the White Cube gallery in London. A life-sized, platinum skull encrusted with 8,601 diamonds totaling 1,106.18 carats, the piece is intended to be a celebration of life. If it sells for the asking price of $99 million, Hirst will find himself on a price level with Pablo Picasso and Gustav Klimt. The show also will include two new series of works by Hirst: "Fact Paintings", which depicts the birth of the artist's son by cesarean section, and "Body Paintings", based on images of cancer and other terminal illnesses. A private viewing is scheduled for June 2nd and the exhibition opens to the public on June 3rd.

Tags: beyond belief, BeyondBelief, body paintings, BodyPaintings, damien hirst, DamienHirst, diamond skull, DiamondSkull, fact paintings, FactPaintings, for the love of god, ForTheLoveOfGod, white cute gallery, WhiteCuteGallery

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

enemyofsocialdistortion May 18th 2007 7:01PM

sounds interesting but it would have been smarter if the gallery was opened for the sake of helping people with cancer and other illnesses.

Renan May 18th 2007 11:09PM

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Grettings from Brazil.
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princess poon May 18th 2007 11:18PM

It burns when I pee

Eddie Ed @ BTC magazine Jun 3rd 2007 2:05PM

The skull is the uber death's head bling bling accessory. This skull is the craziest peice of art I've seen. Nice one Damien. Kinda reminds me of a rabbit's skull I contemplated buying in Northern Mexico. However, the rabbit's skull was covered in colourful beads arranged in flower patterns and nowhere near your asking price. If I had the cash the diamond skull would be sitting in my office vault. Make the next human skull in rubies and do the eyebrows in emeralds.

Mark datter Jun 8th 2007 7:11AM

THE ASTRONOMICAL NEW HISTORY OF ART

Following Damien Hirst’s £50 million “For the love of God”, I have decided to put my painting “The eternal and infinite universe (94)” on the market for £50 million and one pence. This work, painted in 1994, November, carried a brief explanation of the universe as eternal and infinite, reasoning that the visible universe should be accelerating apart (in a way that also explained the ‘clumping of matter’ phenomenon). It also provided an explanation for Olbers paradox, in an infinite universe, in terms of basic physics. The painting was publicly exhibited first in Jan 1995 with a price of £7 million.
Gathering observations of supernovae about two-to-three years later showed the universe was accelerating apart (against all the expectations of astrophysicists) affirming the theory in the painting.
Naturally, if the universe is infinite and eternal (something we can never know for sure) then everything is ultimately unfathomable. Maybe that is why the universe becomes more understandable ultimately to an artist than to scientists.
The new price reflects the painting’s (not yet widely known) unique achievement in the history of art and the history of understanding the universe: two histories that should converge, as they do in this work.

Mark Bridger