Word: hirst
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...global sales campaign may be a good idea. In August, the Art Newspaper reported that Hirst's London gallery White Cube had a backlog of over 200 of his unsold works, worth more than $185 million. If the story is correct - the gallery says it's not, but hasn't detailed how many Hirsts it has on hand - it would mean that Hirst has run into that age-old problem of factory production: excess inventory. A few weeks ago Bloomberg.com quoted Robert Sandelson, a London gallerist who has dealt in Hirst, about the "pressure" that overproduction has placed...
...This may be another reason, apart from the impulse to explore new avenues, why Hirst has decided to throttle back production of the spin and butterfly paintings. The Sotheby's sale is also a canny way of getting his name out to new buyers. "There's our global reach," says Cheyenne Westphal, Sotheby's European chairman of contemporary art. "We're everywhere, and we act as a magnet for all the new people coming into the market." And a lot of those people might be more comfortable in an auction house - where anyone with cash can flex their muscles - than...
...Meanwhile, the future of Hirst's market is also affected by the so far inconclusive fate of his most highly publicized project, a diamond-encrusted skull he unveiled last year called For the Love of God. As a trope for human folly and cupidity, a glittering death's head is as tired as it gets. Hirst's twist, such as it was, was to have the thing manufactured at a stratospheric level of crass luxury - a platinum skull layered with 8,601 diamonds - then to offer the poisoned apple to the world's billionaires for $100 million. At that price...
...least that was how it was supposed to work. About a year ago Hirst announced that the skull had fetched the full $100 million price. But the purchasers turned out to be a still unidentified consortium of investors that include Dunphy, Jopling and Hirst. Dunphy says the three of them maintain a "controlling interest in the work" - meaning they sold the biggest stake to themselves. Eventually, he insists, they will resell it, after it has toured a few museums. A planned exhibition at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg fell through - Dunphy says he and the museum couldn't agree...
...Dunphy is routinely described as a father figure to Hirst. When Hirst is in London they regularly breakfast together, with Hirst always doing a little sketch of Dunphy at the table. The Irishman talks disapprovingly of Hirst's old party habits, and you sense that he played a role in Hirst's decision a few years ago to give up drugs and booze. "When I was drinking I thought I was working at half power," Hirst says. "But when I stopped I realized I had been working on, like...