Damien Hirst: Jumping the Shark ⇥ businessweek.com

Great article by Andrew Rice of Bloomberg Businessweek:

James Kelly, chief executive of Hirst’s private company Science Ltd., says his boss “has transcended all confines of the art world” and is unconcerned about the auction results. “Certain artworks that come to auction are being priced, one could say, more realistically at today’s values,” Kelly says. “However, the long-term view is that prices for Damien’s work will be strong.”

Hirst’s naysayers doubt that. They trace his fall to a $200 million auction staged in 2008, on the day Lehman Brothers collapsed. Hirst sold hundreds of works directly to bidders, defying the custom of restricting supply. “Hirst screwed with his market, and it came back to bite him,” says Michael Plummer, principal of the investment advisory firm Artvest Partners. “He broke the economic rules of the industry.”

Hirst’s works are a challenge for similar reasons as Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics are, but they’re very exciting artworks.