After 15 years, Hirst reveals where his $100m skull is buried

WHEN Damien Hirst sold a diamondencrusted platinum skull for $100 million amid great fanfare in 2007, it was said to be the most expensive contemporary work of art ever made.

But the world’s richest artist has now admitted that the work, called For The Love Of God, was never properly sold.

Instead, he’s revealed that it languishes in storage in London’s jewellery district, Hatton Garden, owned by himself, the White Cube art gallery and undisclosed investors.

And he still feels frustration that potential buyers shied away from the work when they were happy to splash millions on canvases smeared with paint. ‘Everyone buys into the fact that paintings cost nothing to make, but can sell for an infinite amount,’ Hirst (above) tells a U.S. newspaper.

‘Why can they believe in that, but not the other?’ he adds. At the time of the alleged sale, Hirst’s spokesman said: ‘The skull has been sold to an investment group for $100million [£74m].’ The spokesman added that Hirst retained a percentage of the work in order to oversee a global exhibition.

Critics had suggested that the high price of the skull, which is entirely covered in 8,601 flawless diamonds and cost £12 million to make, had meant that finding a buyer was proving problematic. The identity of the buyers was kept secret and Hirst’s business manager insisted that they had not received a discount.

Hirst, who has an estimated fortune of almost £300 million, employs a factory of assistants to help with the creation of his mass-produced works, and is candid in saying that he sees his art as ‘a brand produced in a factory’.