A diamond-encrusted skull by British artist Damien Hirst has sold for $122 million, a record price for work sold by a living artist.
The work, entitled "For the Love of God," is a skull cast in platinum and encrusted with 8601 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 an group of anonymous investors, a spokeswoman for the White Cube gallery in London, where it has been on display from the beginning of the summer.
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 6136 hand-crafted and individually-painted pills, sold for $23.4 million in June.
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