In a Sotheby’s auction in September 2008 Damien Hirst sold £111 million worth of his work. This is ten times more than the previous record for work by a single artist. Opinion is sharply divided on Damien Hirst and his place in the pantheon of significant artists. But if the primary function of art is to illuminate, to chronicle a time, a milieu, a civilization then surely he has no equal.
His work initiated one of the last great, certainly the most celebrated, manifestations of excess milennial wealth. And then the world crumbled. Damien Hirst the artist bookended the days of the fast one with a fast one of his own.
The selling of the art was a greater testament, a greater piece of art than any of the art itself. That's art.
