Damien Hirst: Record-Breaking Art, Plagiarism Claims, and Rotting Works

Key facts

• For the Love of God is a platinum cast of an 18th-century human skull covered with 8,601 flawless diamonds, including a pear-shaped pink diamond called the Skull Star Diamond.
• The sculpture cost £12 million to make and was originally listed at £50 million, but Hirst has admitted it is in storage.
• Hirst has faced 16 public plagiarism claims, including from Eddie Saunders, John LeKay, Joseph Cornell, and Joe Machine.
• In 2008, Hirst bypassed galleries and sold directly through auction houses, netting almost $200 million.
• Hirst has produced over 2,000 spot paintings since 1988 but reportedly painted only five himself.
• His works have used 36 mammals, 685 fish and sea creatures, and 912,005 insects, butterflies, and houseflies.
• In 2003, Hirst was the largest international importer of butterfly wings.
• His first student show at Goldsmiths College of Art included a photograph taken in a mortuary where he worked in Leeds at age 16.
• His 1991 shark in formaldehyde, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, rotted and was replaced; the replacement was rejected from a 2024 Paris museum show due to poor condition.
• A Guardian investigation found many formaldehyde works were misdated as 1990s but created in 2017; Hirst defended this as the 'date of conception.'