Sounds like the British art-huckster Damien Hirst, who, in June 2008 suceeded in selling a $100,000 diamond-encrusted platinum skill to an investment group that HE belongs to. He said after the sale, he intends on pocketing the money and re-selling the skull to another bidder in the future. Now THAT is a beautiful scam...
http://www.luxist.com/photos/the-world-of-damien-hirst/872133/
He also sold at Sotheby's, in September of 2008, a formaldehyde-preserved calf with 18k golden hooves and horns to an undisclosed bidder for $18 million. That same day, he also succeeded in bilking another "collector" to the tune of $17.2 million, a shark in formaldehyde. Total take for Hirst in his 2-day, 1-man collection auction at Sotheby's? A cool $200.8 million. Not a bad take for a couple of days at the auction block, eh?
http://www.luxist.com/2008/09/15/hirsts-golden-calf-sells-for-record-breaking-18-million/
The art world has become so infiltrated with self-indulgent pseudo-intellectuals and well-funded sociopathic deviants that there is almost nothing of true artistic merit, beauty, or genuine humanity being created by "big league" artists anymore. It seems that "works of art" now primarily consist of jars of bodily effluvia with various religious articles suspended in them, epoxy-encased, thinly-sliced corpses of humans, suspended on wires, and various large animals swimming in gigantic formaldehyde-filled aquariums, made up to look like the very gods of iniquity and depravity that these people apparently serve.
The debased aesthetics and moral turpitude of the people who are creating this "art" are mid-boggling in their depths.
The explanations of these works by pseudo-intellectual ******s calling themselves "art critics" or "art academics" often rival the insane rantings of Charles Manson in their twisted, convoluting, self-contradictory circuity.
And the demented, Molock-worshiping super-rich sociopaths who buy this art will hopefully, one day, be memorialized for their participation in these inhuman displays of avarice and life-devaluing nihilism, as flayed, epoxy-encased briskets themselves, preferably sooner than later...
Any artist who dares makes art that is not somehow repulsive, offensive, or outright death-cult idolary is at the least derided as "quaint" or "whimsical", but more often is lambasted as "retrogressive" or viciously flayed in print as being "out of touch with the modern aesthetic".
It is a sad state of affairs, not just for the art world, but for the ENTIRE world, when art of beauty is called disgusting and unmarketable, and the disgusting and debased is hailed as desireable. Perhaps, however, art is imitating life--or at least the low-lifes who can afford to buy it...