The Cool House: Crisis? What crisis?

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Crisis? What crisis?


The stock market is tumbling to the depths but the art market is looking pretty perky, especially if your name is Damian Hirst and you sold a huge collection of recent works through Sotheby's yesterday and today. “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” featured 223 works including Golden Calf (above), which fetched a record breaking 10.35 million pounds. Hirst's six studios have been working flat out to produce the art for the auction and other works for sale include The Kingdom, a tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde and Aurothioglucose, a dot painting. Although some people thought Hirst was taking a risk by-passing galleries and selling directly through an auction house, it seems to have paid off. I wonder what he is going to do with all that money?
And just to make me feel old, the auction was held on the 20th anniversary of the Freeze exhibition that launched Damian Hirst on the art world.

2 comments:

Marilyn said...

That calf always scares the bejeezus out of me! Damien H - genius or smug aging (and rich) scamp?

modernemama said...

With age comes wisdom? or at least the knowledge of how to make a buck?
I love some of his early works but it feels "factory farmed" now