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August 29, 2008

A Tsunami of Damien Hirst Art Works....

It's not just a flood of Damien Hirst art works...it's the Katrina of the Art World!

There are several reports out that his art dealers are already choking on having trouble "selectively placing" tons of unsold art works by Damien Hirst.

Plus.. Let us not forget, the famous 100 million dollar folly diamond skull was never sold.

Like lambs (or sheep) to the slaughter, Now, Sotheby's is also holding a 100% Damien Hirst art selling marathon in mid September at their London Offices.

Damien_Hirst_TheBlack_sheep Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, a major auction of works by Damien Hirst, will include an important series of new pieces which have been created over the past two years, including monumental formaldehyde sculptures; paintings which expand on the artist's classic themes such as butterflies, cancer cells and pills; exquisite new cabinets and insightful preparatory drawings.

56 Lots on September 15th at night.

Lots 101 to 180on September 16th in the morning

Lots 201 - 287on September 16th in the afternoon.

(Photo #1, Lot 9, Damien Hirst, 1965 The Black Sheep with The Golden Horn, Executed in 2008, sheep, 18 carat gold, glass, steel, acrylic, silicone and formaldehyde solution, 43 x 64 x 25", price est 2 - 3 Million Pounds Sterling..about $4 million USD)

Sheeps, Sharks, Butterflies, Pills, pok-a-dots..etc.. you name it.. there's at least one or 2 of freshly made Hirst works for sale... so much for scarcity! I guess Damien's army of art "collaborative artists" have been very busy make his art to sell.

If MAO was rich enough to be, stupid enough to be, fortunate enough to be a collector of Damien Hirst works... we would be very worried!  It looks like this auction may become the watershed Big Fall benchmark event for the contemporary art world.

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I may be wrong but I think the direct auction will have catastrofic consequences to his carrer and also to this insane bull market in contemporary art.


If I was a Damien's collector, I would be praying a lot for a great auction result.

We will see if the new money will be enough to save the face...

But I thought the diamond skull was finally sold for an undisclosed sum. I could be wrong, but the link you point to is over a year old.

Personally I think the auction will do well overall but wouldn't be surprised to see some of the weaker stuff get busted. They've really been marketing this auction big time and I think it makes it much more desirable to collectors to buy from this historic auction than to pick up something from Jay Jopling's back room.


This looks alot of work for either the artist to buy back, or for big investors and hedge funds to buy just to prop up their holdings.
However as previous comments above suggest, this may be widely perceived as a watershed moment for the 'art market'.
-in which case big money (and that looks awfully big these days), including the big money of the artist himself , may be willing to stake alot on 'keeping up appearances'.
-For those of us who are just in the little old 'art world', watching the orgies of the 'art market' is a bit odd: if the art market collapses as it did in the early '90's- late '80's, how are non-'investment grade' artists affected.
Last time it felt like art went way out of fashion and people weren t interested in art anymore-in fact in some quarters Contemporary Art was perceived as a bit of a sham:it had turned out to be a near worthless over-hyped commodity and it s former messengers were duly (socially) shot.
Some artists and curators became something else and art making circles got smaller, tighter and more about just art.
I wonder if that could happen again?

I laughed aloud, by myself, at "it's the Katrina of the Art World!" That line is so great.
xo
ZS

As I suspected it appears the sale now after the first day has done VERY well, even on the same day that the DOW has declined over 4%!!!

Almost everything sold so far and most went over estimates. This work estimated at 2-3 million US dollars sold for an astounding (approx.) 9-10 million US dollars!!!
http://www.sothebys.com/app/live/lot/LotDetail.jsp?lot_id=159474065

White Cube can't be upset about this and I'm sure will now have people running after their inventory. Is art now becoming a safe haven as currencies have shown their weakness?

Damien Hirst has help of closer friends like White Cube Frontman, This kind of art-marketing is bad for art, is like the Katrina, others in that way of bad ideas are Koons and Maquiamelo, also Jake and Dinos Chapman

Great work! Thanks for sharing it

I want to see real pitures of this post.

I interviewed Damien earlier this year in Bali, where he was finishing an intense three-month painting session. I expected him to have a bumper sticker on his laptop that said, “Suck my cock vomit.” Which he did. But I didn’t expect him to be extraordinarily down-to-earth, generous, and aware of his own position in a way that is caring rather than cynical.

Despite his image (despite what I had thought and written before the interview) I was struck by how much he really does care about art. The conversation completely reversed my opinions.

When you hear him talk about painting — the interview touches on everything from the suicide of his close friend to the essence of painting to five-foot wooden giraffes, with a detour on the nature of visual language using Vaseline and a cucumber — you get the sense of an exceptionally intelligent man who is trying to protect art from the art world (including himself.)

If you’re interested, it’s republished at http://www.boldizar.com/blog/nonfiction/damien-hirst-new-paintings-interview/

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