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)

Some in the art world may have mocked Dasha Zhukova’s credentials as an aspiring aficionado and sniggered when she embarrassingly revealed that she couldn’t name a single artist. But the 27-year-old girlfriend of Roman Abramovich appears to have had the last laugh.
For yesterday Ms Zhukova announced that she is to host the Serpentine Galley’s annual summer party, and revealed plans to forge a long-lasting link between the London gallery and her own art house in Moscow.
The party is one of the art world’s most high-profile social events and is regarded by many as the hottest ticket of the season. As the sponsor, Ms Zhukova is in good company. Previous backers include Yves Saint Laurent and Swarovski.
And the company at the bash on Tuesday isn’t likely to be too shabby either. Previous years’ guest lists have included the Hollywood actors Jude Law, Kevin Spacey, Nicolas Cage and Pierce Brosnan, while the art contingent consisted of Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and the Chapman brothers. The plan is that, rather than merely sponsor the party, the financial input will extend to a long-term cooperation between the Serpentine and her own gallery, The Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture, which opens in Moscow a week later.
(The Independent)

Damien Hirst, the U.K.’s richest artist, is hoping his “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” auction of new works at Sotheby’s in London will shake up the art market.
Speaking in an interview today in London, he described the traditional system of dealers selling artists’ works as “unfair”.
“It seems sad that artists don’t make money”, he said. “If you say to someone that galleries take 50 percent, they’d be shocked by that. In any other business, it’s an extortionate amount of money. I’ve never thought it made much sense”.
Hirst, 43, said that Sotheby’s was not charging him any fees for the auction: “I now have the choice of selling in a gallery or at an auction”. Sitting at a mahogany table in the Sotheby’s boardroom and surrounded by his butterfly paintings, he said that his next exhibition will be at a commercial gallery, “if they’ll have me”.
“I definitely get a kick out of upsetting a lot of people”, said Hirst, wearing a black suit with a T-shirt underneath.
The 223-lot sale, to be held on Sept. 15 and 16, is expected to fetch at least 65 million pounds ($114.5 million), said Sotheby’s.
According to the catalog, buyers at the Hirst sale - which went on view to the public on Sept. 5 - would be charged a sliding-scale fee starting at 25 percent for works priced less than 25,000 pounds. All the works have been produced in the last two years with the aid of assistants at the artist’s six studios in Devon, Gloucestershire and London.
Dealers said this was the first time a major contemporary artist had sold a large body of work directly through an auction house rather than through a commercial gallery.
According to an article published yesterday in the Sunday Times, the artist’s manager Frank Dunphy said Hirst was worth $1 billion and the “biggest dollar earner in the history of art”.
Hirst owns between 30 and 40 properties, including a 3 million-pound country house in Gloucestershire and a pair of houses in Mayfair, said the newspaper. The official Sunday Times Rich List 2008 calculated Hirst’s fortune at 200 million pounds. (Bloomberg)

In September Sotheby’s will gratify the curiosity of various art lovers, without forgetting to satisfy also those who can afford statues of exceptional value and especially of extra large dimensions.  From 9th September to 2nd November, the luxuriant gardens of Chatsworth will be animated by the presence of extraordinarily large statues.  “Beyond Limits” is at its third edition bringing pieces of mighty proportions into the charming vegetation of the magnificent residence of Chatsworth, English treasure built in the 16th century by the Duke of Devonshire, already venue of many cultural events and residence that inspired Jane Austen.

The agenda of art lovers in the month of September will be full of important appointments for the art market, with regard to both ancient art and modern and contemporary art.   Various sales will be held by the different international auction houses.  All ready to start a second semester wondering what it will be like.

The summer is coming to an end and at last with the first days of September we can observe that the most important international auction houses are setting to work in order to launch a sensational autumn season, in which the art market will be put to the test again, verifying whether the trend is positive or if there are the first signs of a crisis that all the economists of the sector have been expecting for some time.
The dance for the opening of the new season of the market will be led by the union Damien Hirst and Sotheby’s with the presentation of “Beautiful inside my head forever”, sale scheduled for the 15th and 16th September at the London venue of the famous auction house.  A historical occasion which is anticipated to fetch something like 65 million pounds (about 82 million euros).

The outcome of Sotheby’s auction of new works by Damien Hirst is crucial to the overall confidence of the contemporary art market, according to a report published today by the research company ArtTactic.
The research was compiled by the London-based company’s founder Anders Petterson before the “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” sale of material from Hirst’s studio that Sotheby’s expects to fetch at least 65 million pounds ($117 million).
Petterson examined how Hirst’s works have performed at auction over the last four years since Sotheby’s October 2004 “Pharmacy” sale. That auction of the contents of the artist’s defunct Notting Hill restaurant made 11.1 million pounds, more than double the 4.9 million-pound top estimate.
According to ArtTactic report, if Sotheby’s 223-lot sale in London on Sept. 15 and 16 raises $150 million, it will match the total achieved from all of Hirst’s auction sales between 2000 and 2008. If it performs below expectations, it could “signal a wider contemporary art market in decline,” said the report.
“It’s a very important event”, said Petterson in a telephone interview. “It will set the tone for the autumn season of contemporary auctions and potentially further than that”.
ArtTactic predicted that the Hirst sale would perform well. In a poll it conducted among 51 market insiders, 78 percent felt the total would fall within Sotheby’s estimate range, said the report.
“I’d be surprised if Sotheby’s didn’t sell at least 85 percent of the lots”, said the New York-based art adviser Todd Levin, director of the Levin Art Group, in a telephone interview, when asked to comment on the report. “Hirst and (his manager) Frank Dunphy are smart guys. Do you think they’re really going to ask a question they don’t know the answer to?” (Bloomberg)

The first semester for the art market is about to come to an end and before its conclusion Christie’s auction house is going to try itself out with an auc