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Diamond skull sells for $100m
31/08/2007 10:55 - (SA)
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| A diamond-encrusted skull by British artist Damien Hirst has sold for $100m, a record price for work sold by a living artist. (AFP) |
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London - A diamond-encrusted skull by British artist Damien Hirst sold on Thursday for $100m , a record price for work sold by a living artist, a London gallery announced.
The work, entitled For the Love of God, is a skull cast in platinum and encrusted with 8 601 diamonds.
Carbon dating has shown that the original skull on which Hirst's work is modelled dates to the 18th century.
Hirst remains best known for earlier conceptual works in which creatures including a shark and a cow were pickled in formaldehyde inside glass tanks.
The diamond-encrusted skull was sold to a group of anonymous investors, a spokesperson for the White Cube gallery in London, where it has been on display from the beginning of the summer, told AFP.
Central theme
Death is one of the central themes in works completed by Hirst, 41, who once said that the September 11 2001 attacks in the United States were like a work of art, but later apologised.
Hirst also holds the record for the most expensive work of art by a living artist at auction - his Lullaby Spring, a three-metre wide steel cabinet containing 6 136 hand-crafted and individually-painted pills, sold for $19.2m in June.
- AFP
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