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That much for a dead shark?

Damien Hirst has never played by the rules. Known as a joker at school, famously receiving an ‘E’ on his art A-Level, he channelled his rule-breaking instinct into shocking and lucrative art early on. He showed his entrepreneurial skills while still at art school by running the momentous Freeze exhibition in 1988 with fellow art students from Goldsmiths College, which subsequently changed the face of British contemporary art.

Not much has changed. This summer saw an event described by Hirst himself as ‘probably the most amazing show I’ve put on’. In a move that shocked the art world he disregarded the accepted rules and took 223 of his works straight to auction, without going via a dealer. It had never been done before, and considering how much the stood to gain financially from this (the dealer can take 50%), Damien demonstrated that his business skills are still well ahead of the game.

Sotheby’s on Bond Street housed the Beautiful Inside My Head Auction which one might describe as a ‘best of’ Hirst’s work. There were a handful of sharks, vitrines, spot and spin paintings, works with butterflies, skulls and diamonds – all Hirst trademarks – with more unusual pieces included. It was like a retrospective of a scale never before seen, and indeed was treated like one by the public.

More than eight thousand people came to see what was effectively a free exhibition, doing Hirst no end of good in terms of publicity. Most famous was the Golden Calf, a bullock that wore golden shoes and a golden orb above its head, a biblical reference. It sold for £9,200,000.

Financially this was particularly interesting because this was not a collection of Hirst’s past works. All the pieces were dated 2008 and had been produced over the last two years by Hirst’s six studios, working flat out. The result was a vast collection of pieces which filled both floors of Sotheby’s and comprised the largest exhibition it had ever put on.

Such mass production in his studios is not new for Hirst – he employs approximately 160 people in his empire – but it does raise questions of authenticity. When all it takes is a signature to make the work authentically his, is Hirst seeing just how far he can push buyers and just how much money he can make?

This isn’t a new thought though; the conceptual artist Piero Manzoni signed people’s bodies in the 50s and declared them works of art. He later canned and sold his own shit.

What is unusual is Hirst’s openly mercurial manner of avoiding the dealer and churning out works in the vein of his most famous, and most expensive, greatest hits. Traditionally a dealer is an artist’s route to sales as negotiator and advertiser, but here Sotheby’s did all the advertising and drew huge crowds.

The auction itself was spread over two days; the evening of 15th September and the next day. It was filled with everyone from Bianca Jagger and Jay Jopling (owner of the White Cube), and Hirst’s art dealer (until now), to yours truly. Everyone wanted to see what would happen; would Damien make the £50 million he was asking for and how would the art world respond?

That evening alone made £70.5 million, with many telephone bids across the world. The costliest items were the infamous Golden Calf, a shark in formaldehyde and a huge medicine case of diamonds. The whole auction sold a spectacular 98% of works over the two days for a total profit of £111 million, breaking the record for a single artist auction.

Hirst is playing a game with his buyers; his works have frequently tripled and quadrupled in value after they’ve been sold; his famous shark is worth $8 million, having originally been sold for £50,000. The advance estimates he set for works at this auction showed that Hirst was trying to anticipate this jump in value and reap the profits himself.

Cunning, but that’s Hirst for you. He is the artist who simply cut a shark in half and pickled it. That shark is now worth $8 million. Hirst himself is worth several billion. The man is no fool. He is an acute manipulator of his media, not to mention the viewing public. Of course, he is open to the accusation of making art for money, rather than money through art.

What he creates is so far beyond the reach of the average wallet, yet the public lap it up with glee. So, what next for the man who can make £70m in one night? According to him, he’s taken up painting in his shed.

 

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