Introduction
Entitled Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, the ground-breaking auction in which Hirst showcased 287 works produced in the past two years took place on September 15th and 16th, 2008, at Sotheby’s in London. Despite financial turmoil in the global marketplace, the two-part sale brought in $200.7 million — far exceeding its high estimate of $112 million — with Hirst netting $172 million, $6.2 million donated to charity, and Sotheby’s retaining the rest as commission. The sale featured a host of quintessential Hirstian works including a selection of tanks containing various pickled animals, butterfly paintings — which Hirst said he will no longer be producing — spot paintings and spin canvases. Highlights included The Golden Calf, a preserved bulluck boasting horns and hooves, cast in 18-carat gold, crowned with a golden disk and ensconsed in a tank sitting upon a marble pedestal, which fetched $18.6 million; The Kingdom, another formaldehyde work, this time featuring a shark suspended in a tank, brought $17.2 million; and Fragments of Paradise, a riff on Hirst’s medicine cabinet sculptures, this time filled with synthetic diamonds, was purchased by Hirst’s London dealer, Jay Jopling, for $2.9 million.
The Hirst auction room at Sotheby’s in London.
Photo: Sotheby’s press release 9/16/08
The auction process is viewed as a democratic method of selling art works, with the bidder willing to spend the most money obtaining the work. There are no wait-lists or screening processes, as is the case with many contemporary galleries. Anyone can bid — provided they have the requisite capital. Compared to a gallery transaction in which the dealer possesses a disproportionate amount of information, which he or she may choose to disclose only to certain buyers, in theory, all bidders at auction are equal. In addition, Hirst attempted to democratize the process by offering more modestly priced works, priced between £20,000 – 40,000, which he hoped would attract young and emerging collectors.
The Traditional Process – Artist as maker; Dealer as promoter
With the emergence of the modern dealer in the late 19th century, the art market adopted a linear progression in which work was created in the artist’s studio, sold on the primary market by dealers, purchased by collectors and institutions and, if the owner elected to deaccession, sold on the secondary market at auction. Distinguished French dealers, such as Paul Durand-Ruel and Ambroise Vollard, championed Avant-Garde art in favor of that endorsed by the Academy, actively promoted their artists, staged exhibitions, organized auctions and purchased works for their own collections. Thus, the dealer became the artist’s lifeline.
A similar system thrived in the United States at the turn of the century, with modernist artists migrating from Europe to New York City. Innovators such as Betty Parsons, Ileana Sonnabend, and her first husband, Leo Castelli, enabled many giants of American art. Castelli, arguably the most influential dealer of the 20th century, fostered the careers of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol, among others. Castelli did not engage in the secondary market; instead, he spent his career visiting artists’ studios, molding their public personas, and providing material and emotional support.
Dealers continue to act as market-makers, providing support networks for their artists while also selling works by established artists on the secondary market. Larry Gagosian and Arne Glimcher have promoted the careers of some of Contemporary art’s most influential contributors. With their gallery branches extending from New York to Rome to Beijing, these dealers are able to promote work to an international clientele.
The Studio System
The recent revival of the studio system has enabled a group of artists to serve as both art makers and self-promoters, diminishing their reliance on dealers. A further liberating factor has been what Amy Cappellazzo, head of Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary department termed the “ghost” of Andy Warhol continuing to manifest itself in Contemporary art. The principles of Warhol’s Factory, in which he employed a group of assistants to execute much of his work, have permitted artists who are so inclined to churn out large numbers of works in shorter periods of time and have permeated the operations of three of the top-selling Contemporary artists—Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Damien Hirst. Each presides over an arsenal of assistants who often produce a work in its entirety, with the initial concept as the sole remnant of the artist’s input. In addition to fabricating works of art, this enterprise serves as marketer and business developer for the artist, essentially removing the dealer from the equation. Murakami’s KaiKai KiKi Co., Ltd. cites “production and promotion of merchandise” as a company objective. The company’s 70-some employees assist the artist in fabricating and promoting his work, much in the same way Hirst’s company, Science, Ltd., operates.
Hirst evidences no qualms with having his assistants execute work in his name. In fact, Hirst exclaims, "The spots I painted are shite […] The best person who ever painted spots for me was Rachel. She's brilliant. The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel" (Andrew Johnson,“A Damien Hirst original…, The Independent, 9/14/2008). A November 2007 issue of Art and Auction contains a photo of Hirst reading the paper while a female assistant meticulously paints one of “Hirst’s” canvases. (The Studio System,” Art and Auction, November 2007) With an arsenal of assistants and Frank Dunphy, a personal business manager and promoter, Hirst no longer requires financial and marketing support from his dealers, although they continue to sell work on the primary and secondary markets.
Art & Auction
Hirst reading the paper while a female assistant meticulously paints one of “Hirst’s” canvases. Photo: November 2007 issue of Art and Auction
Hirst As Self-Promoter
Hirst, the most successful of all the YBAs (Young British Artists) and reportedly the wealthiest living artist, worth an estimated $1 billion, did not arrive at his current position of wealth and fame on his own. Patron and advertising mogul Charles Saatchi was instrumental in launching the artist’s career; he funded Hirst’s iconic work The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a meditation on the inevitability of death and man’s futile attempt to reject it, in the form of a pickled tiger shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde, which was exhibited at the “Young British Artists” show organized in London by Saatchi in 1992. Saatchi continued to aid Hirst by funding projects, mounting shows, and purchasing work from the artists, but they eventually parted ways.
Hirst has always acted as a self-promoter, freeing himself from stringent contracts and maintaining relative self-sufficiency. In 1988 he organized the seminal Freeze Warehouse exhibition, which continues to take place every October in Regent’s Park, London. While Hirst continues to work with dealers, namely Jay Jopling in London and Larry Gagosian in New York, he has negotiated generous commission split conditions with his dealers, with the artist receiving up to 80% of the selling price, and prefers not to sign binding contracts (Colin Gleadell, “Damien Hirst Skips the Middleman,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/17/2008). In February 2008, Hirst teamed up with Bono, the (RED) campaign, Gagosian gallery and Sotheby’s to stage a sale of specially-commissioned work to benefit (RED) initiatives, bringing in over $40 million. While Hirst is not the first self-promotional artist – Rembrandt circulated self-portraits as evidence of his artistic acumen and Gustave Courbet erected his own Pavillion of Realism in response to being rejected from Exposition Universelle by the Academy – no artist has accomplished a feat comparable to Hirst’s sale at Sotheby’s.
So, does Hirst’s Sotheby’s auction represent an aberrant occurrence or, since the contemporary art market is in constant flux, is it part of a natural progression towards a new era? Hirst says: “It’s a very democratic way to sell art and it feels like a natural evolution for contemporary art…The world’s changing, ultimately I need to see where this road leads.” (Sotheby’s Press Release 7/28/08). To arrive at any sensible conclusion, however, it is necessary to consider the fact that Hirst no longer requires the backing of patrons and dealers to ensure his success. The artist has forged a production and marketing empire capable of churning out hundreds of works a year. His fortune has facilitated his prolific production, including For the Love of God, a skull cast in platinum encrusted with 8,601 diamonds. As Hirst explains, “The decision to use diamonds came because I was in a position where I could afford it. I mean, I’d always had the idea. But I’ve always had ideas above and beyound the kind of money I could stretch to.” (Sotheby’s Preview, Sept./Oct. 2008, p.7)
The Future
For Hirst, staging Beautiful Inside My Head Forever represents a natural step in his market progression, but few artists, save the likes of Takashi Murakami and Jeff Koons, are capable of producing comparable amounts of work within a two-year period and enlisiting a major auction house to sell the work. Even Koons is notorious for failing to meet deadlines. The Hirst auction amounted to a massive financial and PR success for the artist; the sale shattered the previous record for a single-artist auction set in 1988 with the sale of 88 works by Picasso, who died in 1973. More significantly, an auction of this magnitude featuring fresh-to-market works produced by a living artist remains unprecedented.
Hirst, however, represents the exception. Many artists in the United States continue to struggle financially, leaning on their dealers to provide financial and marketing assistance, as well as maintaining second, and part-time jobs to generate supplemental income. According to the 2005 census, artists (“including architects, interior designers and window dressers”) reported a median income of $34,800; the overwhelming majority will never be in a position to stage an auction spectacle on par with Hirst’s September sale.
Solo sales of fresh work are not likely to become the norm. We may very well, however, see, For the Love of God, the diamond-encrusted skull in which Hirst himself owns a stake, featured as the star lot of Beautiful Inside My Head Forever – Part II.
