In anticipation of Damien Hirst’s monster car boot sale at Sotheby’s (Beautiful Inside My Head Forever), a number of profiles and articles have reflected on his status as ultimate art world celebrity (and his ballsy move of cutting out his dealers the Gagosian Gallery and the White Cube). The New York Times detailed the lengths Sotheby’s has gone to in preparation of the well-heeled, who will supposedly flock like dead bees to the honey:
Sotheby’s reinforced its floors to show Mr. Hirst’s dead animals. (The calf weighs 10 tons.) And it hired the New York architect Peter Marino to transform a rabbit warren of tiny back offices into a suite of rooms for V.I.P. buyers, with polished mahogany doors and walls lined with Mr. Hirst’s butterfly paintings. The space resembles a five-star hotel; several rooms have fireplaces and all are equipped with flat-screen televisions to allow buyers to watch the sale live and secretly bid by telephone.
Robert Hughes in the Guardian, however, is nothing if not critical:
If there is anything special about this event, it lies in the extreme disproportion between Hirst’s expected prices and his actual talent. Hirst is basically a pirate, and his skill is shown by the way in which he has managed to bluff so many art-related people, from museum personnel such as Tate’s Nicholas Serota to billionaires in the New York real-estate trade, into giving credence to his originality and the importance of his “ideas”. This skill at manipulation is his real success as an artist. He has manoeuvred himself into the sweet spot where wannabe collectors, no matter how dumb (indeed, the dumber the better), feel somehow ignorable without a Hirst or two.
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