Ok, after this post, I promise to shut up about Damien Hirst.
The second day of the Sotheby’s auction of Damien Hirst's 200+ artworks ended yesterday with something like 100,000,000 British pounds in sales (e.g. approximately $200,000,000 US or Cdn – yes, $200 million) even as over $600,000,000,000 US (the extra three 0’s mean a billion, by the way) has been committed by the US government (plus floating $100,000,000,000 in new treasury bonds) to pay for the bailouts and guarantees already committed to date and those to come. The whole world noticed the weird (and possibly wonderful) juxtaposition. SFgate.com blogger Edward Gomez quotes Hirst as (reportedly) saying "I guess it means that people would rather put their money into butterflies [i.e. his butterfly paintings] than banks - seems like a better world today to me." Yep, Hirst strikes a blow for culture and the little guy in one fell swoop. I can’t wait for the first pop art of Damien Hirst, Art Hero to appear.
You judge what it all stands for with these various online discussions of Hirst’s work being gobbled up from the (non-American) world’s nouveaux riches – which may turn out to mean, in this auction context, many Russian buyers – at the same time as the US gets its comeuppance for decades of living fat on the world’s indulgence. Only problem is that the whole world must now suffer – both from the US and from Damien Hirst (…getting fat on the world’s indulgence?).
Edward Gomez, Artist Damien Hirst's auction windfall: "Banks fall over, art triumphs.", SFgate.com
“Russian guessing”, Conde Nast portfolio.com
Peter Conrad, "I have to admit it - I was wrong about Hirst", The Independent (a pre-auction column that counterbalances my own crankiness with Hirst)
The Economist.com, “The boy done good”
Moira Weigel, “Bull market”, Forbes.com
Nina West, “Hirst hysteria”, artfact.com on Forbes.com
Peter Aspden, “Hirst buyers defy gloom to spend £100m on art”, FT.com
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