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Damien Hirst, whose London show closed this month without a sale of his diamond skull, has found buyers for £130 million ($265 million) of art at the White Cube galleries, said exhibitions director Tim Marlow. A split shark fetched £10 million, “three crucified sheep sold for 6 million pounds, and talks to sell the skull were ongoing,” Marlow said in a telephone interview yesterday. Frank Dunphy, the artist’s business manager, has valued Hirst’s art in the White Cube shows at £200 million ($410 million) or more.

Damien Hirst : For the Love of God - 2007

The platinum skull, originally belonging to a 18th c. man aged 35, studded with 8,601 diamonds weighing a total of 1,106.18 carats, and priced at £50 million ($103 million), costs about 12 times as much as hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen paid to buy Hirst’s shark from collector Charles Saatchi. The discrepancy in price, and the skull’s status as a bejeweled object, may explain why contemporary collectors didn’t rush to buy it, art experts said. The central diamond on the forehead of the skull cost£4.2 million ($9 million) alone.

“A work of art does not owe its importance to the fact that it is made of precious materials,” said Jean-Jacques Aillagon, president of the Chateau de Versailles, and through June 2007, director of Francois Pinault’s Palazzo Grassi in Venice. “In the price, how much corresponds to the work of Damien Hirst, and how much to the materials he used for the work?”

George Michael

The White Cube shows drew collectors from Eli Broad to five museums who purchased Hirst’s works, including at least two from the U.S., according to the gallery.

The singer George Michael paid £3.5 million ($7 million) for “Saint Sebastian, Exquisite Pain” - a glass tank containing a black calf, its suspended body tied to a post and pierced by dozens of arrows.

The skull represents a price increase for Hirst that exceeds even those of Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol, which trebled or quadrupled their auction records in May. Hirst’s record of £9.7 million pounds ($20 million) - the highest for a living artist - was set in June at Sotheby’s, when a telephone bidder bought a pill cabinet, “Lullaby Spring,” that cost the New York seller about £730,000 ($1.5 million) in 2002, auctioneers said.

Joel Mallin, a sculpture collector who sold the pill cabinet in London, said the appreciation was beyond his expectations.

“I only sold this piece because the art market has gotten so outrageous,” Mallin said in a telephone interview. Still, “the price was a surprise.”

The take from the White Cube shows, including bisected animals and paintings of operations, will probably break the record for a dealer sale of an artist’s works, said Marlow. It would also enrich Hirst, 42, whose fortune has been valued at £130 million ($265 million) by the Sunday Times and who may get 75 percent or more of the proceeds of a sale, according to art professionals.

The amount of art sold to date by White Cube was reported earlier by the Sunday Times.

Schwarzenegger

The U.K. artist’s previous show at Gagosian in Beverly Hills, which drew California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the February opening, sold about 30 butterfly pictures at $1 million to $2.5 million, Gagosian said.

“We’re very confident that the skull will sell, but it’s difficult to say exactly when,” said Marlow. He wouldn’t say if the artwork would be discounted, or if potential buyers were well-known contemporary collectors or new buyers, such as the Russians and East Europeans who patronize the auction rooms. Hirst would prefer a buyer who would show the work publicly, he indicated.

“The skull was shown five weeks in London,” Marlow said. “One issue to consider is whether it can have public access.”

Price

Museum buyers of Hirst’s works would issue releases once they agreed with their trustees about the purchases, or had paid the gallery, he said.

Hirst’s skull, titled “For the Love of God,” cost £10 million to make, according to Dunphy. It is known as the 50 million-pound skull.

“You have to get the price right, or it will come back into the market,” said Hirst, wearing jeans and a blue shirt imprinted with a black bat-winged skull, in an interview at London’s White Cube gallery in June. “A lot of people buy things and flip them,” making a quick profit if the work has been underpriced, he said.

A sale of the skull for £50 million would put Hirst on a price level with Pablo Picasso and Gustav Klimt, dead artists who produced some of the 20th century’s most famous works.

Hirst is a boon for dealers and auction houses. About 80 artists and support staff at his studios help turn out new works, often on the themes of death and disease. His art factory system resembles that of Warhol, who died in 1987.