Coming soon!

AR:Live Blogs

Inside the vitrine: Damien Hirst cleans up at Sotheby's as markets melt

Posted by artreview.com on 16 September 2008 at 5:30pm

By James Westcott

Like one of Damien Hirst's vitrines, the Sotheby's saleroom last night proved perfectly insulated from the real world outside: on the worst day on Wall Street since 9/11 and a day after the collapse of another major investment bank, the first part of Hirst's megasale (firesale?) Beautiful Inside My Head Forever took in £70.5 million, just about matching the upper estimate for the evening, £62.4 million (taking into account the premium, which is conveniently not added to presale estimates).

The saleroom at Sotheby's, Bond Street. All photos: James Westcott

The apparent disconnect between events in the world and events in the artworld is depressing – who wants art to be so distanced from and unreflective of the troubles of the world? – but maybe not as weird as it first looks: the fluctuations of the market might actually reinforce the perception of art as a more reliable investment. Anyway, Hirst buyers are so rich and so international that losses on the Dow and the FTSE don't seem to have much impact, and they're not buying for investment but for fun.

The surreal confidence in the air may well have been an elaborate charade orchestrated by Sotheby's themselves: Carol Vogel reported in the New York Times that '[w]ord in the auction world was that Sotheby's had given him [Hirst's London dealer Jay Jopling] an incentive to steer his clients to the sale', and a furious Ben Lewis, refused entry to Sotheby's for the sale, claims that the lengths Hirst, his business manager Frank Dunphy and Jopling go to to maintain his prices (like buying an ambiguous 'controlling stake' in his £50 million diamond skull when it failed to sell last year – in what other arena of business is such non-transparency acceptable?) would be called fraud if it was done by CEOs trying to cover up losses and keep share prices afloat.

Young Damien held up for viewing / The crowd at the back, in front of The Triumvirate, three cabinets of medical models

In the saleroom, caution was only diagnosable in a lack of outright recklessness: Hirst's trademark vitrines of animals in formaldehyde did very well but not spectacularly, and somehow this felt like a small letdown. The Kingdom (a shark) did best at £9.6 million (the estimate was £4-6 million)...

...but The Black Sheep with Golden Horn went for £2.6 million (estimate £2-3 million), The Golden Calf for £10.3 (£8-12 million) and Theology, Philosophy, Medicine, Justice (four sharks in two vitrines) initially didn't meet the reserve but, somehow, by the time of the press conference the statement was that it had found a buyer. It was the paintings that exceeded expectations, with butterfly works like Silence going for £900,000 (£250,000-350,000) and the photorealist painting of a young Hirst grinning next to a decapitated head in a hospital also going for £900,000 (£300,000-500,000)... to Jay Jopling.

Transience Painting 1 on the stairs / Jay Jopling on the phone to a buyer

Jopling was on the Blackberry, bidding on someone's behalf, but no doubt he got some commission for the bother. So the circle remains unbroken: the traditional dealer still benefits, despite Hirst's unprecedented and supposedly heroic attempt at circumventing his dealers and taking his overstock of butterfly, spin, and spot paintings and a few new vitrines straight to auction. Hirst has been feted by Sotheby's and a few critics for the 'democratisation' implicit in this gesture, meaning that any old Joe can buy at auction if they have enough money, but you have to have certain elitist knowledge, nouse, and connections to get close to a dealer like Jopling or Gagosian. It's been really tough for the total of maybe 100 extremely wealthy people on the planet afflicted by this terrible injustice: rich enough to buy a Hirst, but not smart enough to figure out how – until now.

Hirst himself has also had a tough time of it with his dealers: not only does he have two of the biggest in the world pulling for him, Gagosian and Jopling, he also takes not the standard 50 per cent of his sales, but 70 (and through Sotheby's he must be getting even more). Hirst is really breaking chains for himself and legions of billionaires with his 'democratising' jump to the auction house.

The suspended dove in After the Flood / Sotheby's staff in front of a mirrored cabinet of cigarette butts

The democratisation argument might hold some water if there were more than two other artists in the world – Jeff Koons (who does better sublime kitsch) and Takashi Murakami (who at least admits that he generates merchandise) – who could generate so much excitement at auction. If the auction houses really want to open up the market, why not do solo sales of emerging artists or even of graduate work – that would surely help artists struggling to get galleries, a real glass ceiling. Why not do it? Because it's a terrible idea. Artists need the close attention of a responsible dealer, nurturing and editing them and taking the burden of logistics and economics off their backs. Big auction houses will never be suited for this role.

Going straight to auction with new work is a bit like self-publishing a book – no one can quite trust the result because it hasn't gone through the normal filtration. The huge exhibition that preceded the auction at Sotheby's didn't get much critical attention of the normal variety (except for the repentant Peter Conrad in the Observer). That's because it was the retrospective Hirst deserves: a crowded, repetitive and enervating show revealing nothing but the direct relationship between the evaporation of his ideas and the acceleration of his production (to spice up the spot paintings, why not put butterflies in them? And how to add more zing to the spin paintings? Put a skull in the middle.)

The empty podium afterwards / Cheyenne Westphal of Sotheby's and Hirst's business manager Frank Dunphy at the press conference

Hirst's work may have presumptions (actually, pretensions) at illuminating transience and death and existential insecurity, but no one in the saleroom or on the end of the phones last night seemed to be sobered up by it (or by the market meltdown going on somewhere in the background). This is a good indication of the quality of Hirst's supposed satire: everybody nods knowingly – even the collector spending £10.3 million on The Golden Calf, a brazen symbol of false idolatry, is meant to be implicated in the foolishness of loving money too much – but nobody, especially not Hirst, ever really bears the brunt of it.

Tags: damien hirst, james westcott, sotheby's

45 Comments

Comment by Raquel on 17 September 2008 at 5:09pm: increible

Comment by Max Koss on 17 September 2008 at 5:24pm: I went to see the show, and after a few minutes, I had to yawn. A few minutes later, I was angry. And I rushed out. There was nothing new at all in the show. I agree with the assessment that it was a purely commercial trick, and a fraudulent on top. The Spin paintings with the skull are really just posters for the super wealthy. And I can't help it, posters are just tacky.

Comment by Angelo Pretolani on 17 September 2008 at 5:31pm: Good vibrations!

Comment by Samuel Durkin on 17 September 2008 at 5:31pm: The media made a big deal about an artist going straight to auction being a maverick dangerous thing. Well hundreds of artist are doing just that every single day on on-line auction sites. They all do it for the same reason Hirst is doing it, lower commission charges. However non of them have the connections or media attention Damien has, and the regular art world often puts scorn of these enterprising artists. Auctions are rough on new artists, it teaches them some hard lessons about what people will pay for, but if your not already famous like Hirst, many find they compromise just to make a living.

Comment by Andreas Templin on 17 September 2008 at 5:33pm: I am guessing that Damien Hirst will soon hand in a diamond-encrusted Bentley in formaldehyde driven by Larry Gagosian and Jay Jopling with Tobias Meyer on the backseat for auction

Comment by Phillip M Wiles on 17 September 2008 at 5:39pm: Absolutely obscene, pleople with more money than sense, This is not art at all, complete rubbish, he is laughing all the way to the bank

Comment by Nathan Nicholls aka-recyclesculptor on 17 September 2008 at 5:41pm: All in a name is it not? As if people need a gallery to tell them what is art and what is not. I have gone straight to the public since I started. I sell from my yard in the midle of nowhere Maine.

Comment by Leùna on 17 September 2008 at 6:47pm: Bollox,

Hirst is a wonderful artist. The article above was essentially about money and who made what or spent how much.

As artists who probably make 'fuk all money' talk about his work (all of it) and not the selling price. Who cares what price any of us make for work? In some ways he is like the Morrissey of the art world... priceless, clever, funny and wry.

I like his work, good luck to him and his millions! Lucky us for his work.

♥Leùna♥

Comment by Brian Harte on 17 September 2008 at 6:55pm: i like hirst. he's like a young jimmy white

Comment by mark orbell on 17 September 2008 at 7:46pm: one word 'establishment'. no true artist would want to join because he would have to compromise his art. Good luck to him his art is making money.