Who wants to buy a US$100 million skull?

Wondering what to do with that spare US$100 million in your account, well why don’t you get yourself a diamond encrusted human skull to keep by your bedside.

This is the latest piece of art by the artist Damien Hirst and is considered to be the highest valued work of contemporary art by a living artist. The piece, called the “For the Love of God” is an actual human skull that is covered entirely with 8,601 jewels and with a pear shaped pink diamond as the centre piece.

The skull is believed to be of a 35-year-old European man who had lived between 1720 and 1810. Where ever that guy might be I am guessing that he’s a very happy ghost these days. Hey how many guys can boast that his head is stuffed with diamonds and worth the GDP of a small country? He probably couldn’t sell it off for a few cents in those days. Either that or he’s really pissed. Hope that who ever buys it doesn’t get nightly visits from a headless spook wanting his head back.

Prices of artwork like this are skyrocketing because many consider them good investments. In an earlier post I mentioned about the highest valued painting, a Jackson Pollock worth a cool US$140 million.

Personally I find the whole thing a bit ghastly, not the skull, but the prices some people are wiling to pay for these artworks. It’s not like the artist is even getting a cut, mainly because they are dead now. I too appreciate a good piece of art, but I just think they should be left in museums for all to enjoy. The truth is that these are unique masterpieces born out of the imagination of genius minds and something like that would never be recreated again. However I just don’t get how people can spend these amounts on such frivolous things knowing that somewhere in the world people are dying because they don’t even have the basic necessities to survive. It’s a sad situation, but that’s the reality of things. The rich keeps getting richer and the poor keeps getting poorer.


(Source: www.boingboing.com)