According to Time, Sotheby’s sold 223 works by Hirst over two days’ time. This is unprecedented in that the auction house sold works fresh out of the artist’s studio before they go through primary sales in galleries. Traditionally, auction houses would give at least 5 years since the work’s production before they take it up and make available for auction (Lacayo).
Hirst’s direct association with Sotheby’s increases his financial return by eliminating the involvement of a dealer who can take up to 50% of the total sale. It also makes his works more available for sale to a wider range of buyers. Often times dealers are selective as to whom they sell because they want the artworks they sell to end up in a prestigious collection or museum so that they have impeccable provenance, which brings the dealer good reputation. However, this is not always what the artist wants -- Not Hirst, anyway. Since at auction, anybody who bids the highest wins, there are no restrictions as to who can buy certain works. This is more profitable for the artist because this is where and when the wealthy without a respectable collection or power desired by the dealers can buy whatever they want and they will bid high. It is likely that a work of art would sell at a higher price at auction than it would have in a gallery because at auctions, competition is high and there are many factors like the way the auctioneer leads and steers the auction that can affect the outcome. Moreover, since the fee paid to the auction house is paid by the buyer (buyers’ premium), the price at which the auctioneer’s gavel comes down is what the artist garners for himself. There is no doubt that Hirst has exceptional marketing and entrepreneurial skills. Whether he is a “good” artist is another matter. He completely discarded the traditional qualm and cautiousness of artists about seeking a large profit through selling art in fear of soling the purity of art and openly turns his art into commodities. Not only does he repeat and mass-produce his works, he also does this by the hands of others – his 120 assistants. Many artists would view him as a con-artist.
Hirst’s dealers – Gagosian and Jopling – were also probably unhappy about Hirst’s overstepping them and going directly to the auction houses. Hirsts’ behavior has proven to be profitable on his part, but in context of the market as a whole, such behavior can be unhealthy for the market. Auction houses’ stepping out of their old boundaries by selling works fresh off artists’ studios threatens the position of the dealers. It destroys order within the art world. Also, artists who bypass the dealers, with money as their foremost goal, are likely to fall into the dishonorable trap of vanity that makes producing “good” art difficult.
Hirst, a deft entrepreneur of his brand, was not perfect, however. Considering the huge success of his September 2008 auction, the decline in demand for his works may seem surprising. His market index was inconsistent throughout, and after the 2008 auction it plummeted below that of contemporary art. The number of his paintings bought in at auctions also increased from 2007 and all throughout 2008.
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What does this all mean? Perhaps this plunge suggests that he went too far, or rather, too fast. The market seems to have had enough of the spin and spot paintings. He couldn’t just keep pumping them out forever. Obviously caused by a huge pile of unsold works in his studio, Hirst considerably reduced the size of his group of assistants and announced that he would stop making spin and spot paintings (Henry). However, what I see as his bigger failure than the overproduction problem is that, by reverting back to the traditional paint-on-canvas paintings and saying heedless things about his previous works, he discredited his own works. In my opinion, when an artist confesses that he gave up painting because had tried to imitate some painter but failed is giving up at being a serious artist. When he finally picked up painting again, he had already created a very distinctive image of himself as a different, rebellious artist that goes against the grain, and his attempt to re-establish his status in the art world as a painter was not something that people wanted. He said himself that his spot and spin paintings were a “mechanical way to avoid the actual guy in a room, myself, with a blank canvas,” a statement that strips these early works of the little meaning they had in the first place and debases the unorthodox principles he seemed to believe in to merely a pathetic escape from what he couldn’t achieve due to his incompetence. Hirst was not the only one who was skeptical about his paintings. Critics, calling his paintings in the 2009 exhibition No Love Lost, Blue Paintings "deadly dull and amateurish", "dreadful" and "not worth looking at," seemed to have really hated it, too (Nikkah).
Hirst’s painting
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Works Cited
Henry, Julie. “Damien Hirst lays off workers.” The Telegraph. 22 Nov. 2008. Web. 19 Jan. 2012. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/3500553/Hirst-lays-off-workers.html>.
Jentleson, Katherine. “Beautiful Inside My Head…Whatever.” Art Market Monitor. 6 Feb. 2010. Web. 19 Jan. 2012. <http://artmarketmonitor.com/2010/02/06/beautiful-inside-my-head-whatever/>.
Lacayo, Richard. “Damien Hirst: Bad Boy Makes Good.” Time Magazine. 15 Sept. 2008. Web. 19 Jan. 2012. <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1838750-3,00.html>.
Nikkah, Roya. “Damien Hirst's 'dreadful' paintings draw record crowds.” The Telegraph. 18 Oct. 2009. Web. 19 Jan. 2012. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/6360352/Damien-Hirsts-dreadful-paintings-draw-record-crowds.html>.