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Reading the Market's Mood in Formaldehyde and Spotsby Zoe Strimpel
Damien Hirst's decision to hold an everything-must-go sale at Sotheby's next week, a collection called "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever," has reignited debate in London. The booty, a 223-piece strong trousseau which includes plenty of formaldehyde and spots, went up on display on Friday at the auction house and remains there until the sale on September 15 and 16. The auction is estimated to make up to £65 million ($116 million). ArtTactic, an art-market analyst, said the result could determine the whole mood of the art market. So it sure is important. It could also be seen as ludicrously ill-timed given the deeply shaky economic feeling in the air. Announced earlier this summer, the sale immediately got backs up because it is an unabashed commercial grab for the artist, and artists, of course, are meant to be about deeper things than hard, cold cash. Then there's the politics: Mr. Hirst has simply gone and cut out the middlemen (the gallerists Larry Gagosian and Jay Jopling) and gone it alone. Some, like the London Sunday Times's Waldemar Januszczak, think it's fair play — both the greed and the timing. "There's even a chance Hirst's ridiculous auction will lighten the mood of the entire nation," he writes. "Who else but an artist could ignore all this nonsense about recessions and cutbacks so blithely and stride so crazily in the opposite direction?" Others have seen Mr. Hirst's move as heroic; to those minds, because galleries claim up to 60% commission, they can rightly be called vultures. On the other hand, as Rachel Campbell-Johnston wrote in the Times of London last week, they work as talent spotters and agents, too, bringing unknowns along and giving them the wrapping and bow that turns them into attractive property. Mr. Hirst may well be attractive, but whispers abound that the age of pickled animals has passed and that finally, he may well be selling above his worth.
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