“Art” AND decadence AND morbid weirdity all rolled into one! Can you imagine the sales tax on this puppy? Might go a tad over my Visa card limit with this.
Artist unveils $98M diamond skull
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.
[…]
Hirst, who has a preoccupation with blood and death and whose works range from diced and pickled quadrupeds to bloody depictions of birth, said he was inspired by similarly bejeweled Aztec skulls. While the skull is platinum and the diamonds flawless — and ethically sourced, Hirst stressed — the teeth are real.
WOW, that is badass. I’d buy it if i had that kinda money to blow.
Ah yes, a skull, the perfect symbol for the million people you could feed and vaccinate for that price.
Oooh… The bad boy of art, he’s as innocuous as Björk.
It would be too bad if someone stole the skull, broke it up into its’ component parts, sold them and gave the cash to charity. The world would be an intellectually poorer place without this great art.
I’d buy something like that for about $39.95 at Wal*China*Mart…
It’s only “worth” $98,000,000 if you and many other people believe it is.
Personally, I see jewelry as SHINY ROCKS. That’s all, shiny rocks. These are unnecessary for life. Some things are far more valuable: food, clothing, shelter…
“Ethically sourced” — yah, suuuuuure.
If one were looking for an artifact of modern society to perfectly, profoundly exemplify decadence, it would be hard to top this.
7, Lauren, for that much money that thing would have to safely chauffeur me in grand style and comfort to the grocery store *and* do the shopping plus pick up the tab — forever.
From an article on this in the TOL….he did it to show people’s shallowness, in that anything a famous artist does is always *great* art. It cost him 20 million pounds to create and he said he asked for 50 million pounds to see if anyone would actually pay it, and to prove a point about the outragousness of the price of art today.
This may be the first item I’ve seen in awhile here at DU where everybody who has commented is right. It’s decadent, it’s overpriced, it could feed and medically treat and educate a LOT of people, and if demand developed, you could soon buy a $39.95 replica at Wal*China*Mart (LOVE that name!). Personally, I’d love to see Geraldo Rivera get hold of it do one of his Big Productions out of breaking it up and auctioning off the parts for charity. Portions of ad revenues also to go to charity, blah blah blah. It could be made into the biggest deal since Jerry Lewis revived a flagging career by discovering muscular dystrophy.
#8, And handle the Wal*China*Mart greeter too.
What a useless piece of junk.
Think of all the gasoline he could have bought with that much money.
$98M upfront or 98 eazy payments of $1M…
#5 – Personally, I see jewelry as SHINY ROCKS. That’s all, shiny rocks. These are unnecessary for life. Some things are far more valuable: food, clothing, shelter…
Agreed. Jewelry is extremely low on my priority list.