For the love of god: a £50m work of art

It is, depending on how you look at it, the ultimate bit of bling for a morbidly minded rapper or a searching interrogation of the complex relationship between value and price-tag in the contemporary art market. But whatever you think of Damien Hirst's latest high art provocation, there can be no disputing its brilliance - at least on a literal level. A platinum cast of a human skull has been set with 8,601 flawless diamonds, including a 52-carat, pear-shaped monster that could choke a Hollywood starlet, set off by another 37 carats of flawless whites. Displayed under spotlights in a darkened room in White Cube's Mason's Yard Gallery in south-west London, the skull, which contains three times the number of diamonds in the Imperial State Crown, appears to be the only source of light, a macabre glitter ball which casts a planetarium sparkle on to the awed faces of those who have come to gaze at it. It is a genuinely remarkable object - the silvery glitter of the pavé-set diamonds pierced here and there by dazzling points of intensely coloured light.

Its title is For the Love of God. Pronounce it with a disgusted exclamation mark on the end and you've perfectly captured the reaction of those who think that Brit Arts' most inventive self-publicist has just outdone himself in vulgarity. Murmur it a little more pensively and you've placed yourself in the camp of those who believe that Hirst, one of the richest of the Young British Artists, can afford to pursue his interest in our attitudes to death (and our fantasy that it might somehow be held at bay) to a point that would bankrupt all of his contemporaries.

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That Hirst intends the ambiguity is unquestionable. He's always been a mischievous titler of his works and the name of the exhibition, which contains his latest enterprise in Guinness Book of Records aesthetics, also allows for mixed reactions; Beyond Belief. There are plenty of other new works crammed into White Cube's two London galleries: a new variation on the piece which first made Hirst a cartoonists' shorthand for contemporary art - a bisected tiger shark displayed in two tanks of formaldehyde and teasingly entitled Death Explained; a new series of Biopsy paintings, in which hugely magnified images of cancerous cells are adorned with a lethal glitter of scalpel blades and broken glass; more of his glass-encased parodies of devotional art, including a St Sebastian featuring a martyred, arrow-transfixed calf. But the skull is the show-stopper that will undoubtedly draw the curious. Entrance to the gallery is free but you have to book a timed ticket, and contemplation time is likely to be strictly rationed for mere spectators. Russian oligarchs and hedgefund wizards will undoubtedly get a little more time, but those who like the idea of having unlimited and exclusive access to what must be the most ostentatiously expensive sculpture ever made (the raw materials alone cost about £14m) are going to have to find £50m, a figure that calculatedly pushes Hirst into the salesroom stratosphere normally reserved for the dead or the definitively canonised.

The excess is an integral part of this work - encrusting the most universal symbol of the futility of worldly goods with a skin so precious that the viewer almost forgets what lies beneath. And it is, though it might be hard to credit, a work which is more restrained than it might have been. Hirst originally planned to fit a gold tooth into the one empty space on the skull's jaw but eventually decided that he didn't like the effect. Instead the original owner's teeth were sent off to a private dentist for some cosmetic work and replaced in the platinum jaw, where they now grin at gallery goers - apparently delighted at their own surreal apotheosis.

Forensic work on the skull, purchased from a London taxidermy shop, has established that it belonged to a 30-year-old male of European ancestry who lived some time between 1720 and 1810 - and whose mortal remains have shaped a work of defiant extravagance.

According to one gallery insider there are already two or three buyers having serious discussions about a purchase. They wouldn't comment on whether this interest was being shown by individuals or institutions. Or whether you get a discount for a cash purchase. Provenance is hardly going to be an issue with a work this well publicised but should any buyer be anxious Hirst has signed the work, just behind the skull's squamosal suture. It also carries, for those anxious lest they be short-changed, a platinum hallmark and comes with written guarantees that all of the diamonds have been sourced from conflict-free areas.

But whether Hirst has genuinely added value to that most venerable artistic genre - the vanitas or memento mori - or merely made it a lot more expensive, is another, much larger question. "I could only have ever imagined creating the diamond skull with Bentley & Skinner of Bond Street," Hirst said, talking of the jewellers who took 18 months to plan and construct the skull. "They are a company associated with quality over cash," he added.

The remark implies that he understands and cares about the difference. Views will differ about that. But there's no question that he understands the intersection of modern art and modern publicity. For the Love of God's catalogue note would record that it is made of platinum, diamonds and human ivory. It probably wouldn't record that it also incorporates a raw material that Hirst has nearly always included in his art - mixed media attention. And the value of that is incalculable.