Damien Hirst’s auction at Sotheby’s, London, marks a brilliant and radical innovation. The breakthrough isn’t, of course, in the art on view (on which more later). The novelty lies in the method of sale.
Nobody, as far as I know, has ever brought to the saleroom a large batch of new work directly from the studio, or multiple fabrication locations, in Hirst’s case. It misses out a whole stage in the conventional game - the dealer’s role.
Normally it is years, if not decades, before a work of contemporary art comes under the hammer. Wise old art-world hands have wandered around the display muttering about a stroke of genius, which it is. And of course, financially, it could all go wrong. We’ll know the answer to that on the days of the auction, Sept. 15 and 16.
One thing about the whole enterprise is immediately impressive: its sheer scale. It would be wrong to compare this to a private gallery show held in an auction house. The size of it, 10 large rooms and more than 200 works, is more like a major career retrospective at Tate Modern. (Bloomberg)