DAMIEN HIRST - A JACKASS’ TAKE ON BRITISH ART!

The value of Tracy Emin's Bed is said to have risen to more than £1m. And still, I wouldn’t swap it for my own. Which is how, this very morning, I came to
realize the truth of the fact that the value of money is measured not by what it will buy, but by the number of monetary units you can append to it.

Nor does it matter in which order the 000.000s are placed.

Buying “art” is a numbers game - a commercially inspired misnomer. And much more widely spread around the world than in the 1980's when it was largely dependent on American wealth and irresponsible Japanese speculation. Meanwhile,
the rulers of Qatar have paid tens of millions of pounds for works of British art. The al-Thani family are trying to build up their collections in the Gulf
state. Accordingly, Francis Bacon’s Study from Portrait of Pope Innocent X was
acquired for £26m and a Damien Hirst sculpture for just under £10m.

I wish I could feel this deeply about art!

Hirst the artist - as he is often mistakenly called - is compulsively common with his vocabulary. And with the bearing of a ravenous rent-boy plus the technical know-how of an
entrepreneur, he has reduced artistic creativity to a marketable formula: Gilded Trash!
A fascination with carcasses pervades his work, adding a commercial element of
horror to an otherwise conventionally manufactured production line. But in a
market that refuses to yield to the logic of an international recession, the
real horror is, of course, the ongoing serial production of artefacts for a
collector’s market almost hysterical with anticipation.

“I’ve definitely had the goal to make the primary market
more expensive”

Noticeably eager to please, he is putting up 223 new works for a series of auctions at Sotheby’s beginning Monday, Sept. 15th. Not - if I’ve got this right - his wisest executive decision. No Sir, at
the end of the day, they’re bound to smell a rat and the jig will be up.
Compulsive shopping, on the other hand, is not a specific mental disorder.
Indeed, some experts see it as an addiction associated with low self-esteem, and
it is significant, is it not, that that buyers are not expected to come from
either Europe or America, but such forthcoming places as Qatar and Brunei where,
fired, perhaps, by feelings of cultural inferiority, they’re willing to buy a
jackass’s take on British art complete with an enormous price tag. It will be
one of the things we'll remember them by.


But enough of jackasses and the rest of that garbage! I’m with Toulouse
Lautrec on this one. "The ones who say they don't give a damn, do give a
damn, because if they really didn't give a damn they wouldn't bother to say they
don't give a damn."


Elementary, my dear Toulouse! Elementary!


Dreamy