British "bad boy artist", Damien Hirst, is at it again...
From the New York Times:
Alas, Poor Art Market: A Multimillion-Dollar Head Case
By ALAN RIDING
Published: June 13, 2007
It is no secret that the art market has become drunk with money lately, but $100 million for a diamond skull by the artist Damien Hirst? Even Russian oligarchs and hedge-fund billionaires might think twice.
Related story here
More photos here
There was a time when I would toss all sorts of f-bombs around when I read a story about Damien Hirst and others like him getting whatever astronomical amount of money/attention for their work. Not anymore. I'm more likely to just get a laugh out of it and just keep doing what I'm doing. He's into spectacle and shock, people literally buy into it and he laughs all the way to the bank. End of story.
I have liked some of his work, most notably "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" (1991), better known as the 'dead shark in a tank' piece. I like that piece mainly because it's conceptual idea holds some weight. There might be other works by Hirst that have some idealogical weight to them, but I've not paid much attention to his stuff because of all the mountains of hype and excess that accompanies everything he does...
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