Eccentric Art worth Millions
Posted by Jess Dayuno on July 6th, 2008
|
Photo Credit: Secretly Ironic
If you are looking for a work of art that is unconventional, extraordinary, and thought provoking, then this is the guy for you.
Damien Hirst, a British contemporary artist, is one of the world’s most expensive living artists. He has become highly controversial and notorious, but extremely rich, for his eccentric creations. His work explores the fundamental themes of human existence which is life, death, truth, love, immortality and art itself, in a rather edgy and brutal way, be it on installation, drawing, painting or sculpture. His masterpieces have been called tasteless, weird and absurd by some but it has sold for millions of dollars.
He is best known for the “Natural History” works which presents animals in vitrines suspended in formaldehyde such as “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” in 1991, which is a 14-foot tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a vitrine. It was sold in 2004 to American collector, Steven Cohen, for $8 million dollars.
His other works include “Lullaby Spring,” a stainless steel cabinet containing 6,136 multicolored handcrafted pills, which has sold for $19.3 million at Sotheby’s in 2007. His “Lullaby Winter,” which is made from stainless steel and glass filled with mainly off?white handcrafted pills, has sold for $7.4 million at Christie’s also in 2007.
Photo Credit: Kecko
His latest and most expensive work of art is called, “For the Love of God.” This was inspired by the similarly bejeweled Aztec skulls. It is a diamond?encrusted platinum skull which was sold at the price of $100 million dollars in 2007. The skull was said to have been cast from a 35-year-old European man from the 18th century. It has retained its original teeth for the grotesque element. The platinum skull was embedded with 8,601 diamonds weighing 1,106.18 carats. It has a huge 52-carat pink diamond on the center of its forehead reportedly worth $4.2 million and is studded with 14 pear-shaped diamonds. When asked about this piece, he said, “I just want to celebrate life by saying to hell with death. What better way of saying that than taking the ultimate symbol of death and covering it in the ultimate symbol of luxury, desire and decadence?”
Sotheby’s will auction a new series of Damien Hirst’s work of art in September 15 and 16 of this year in London.