Hirst sale delivers new chapter in art marketing

Michael Coulson

Opinions are sharply divided whether Damien Hirst is a great artist. Before his record-breaking sale at Sotheby’s in London in September, one eminent critic, Robert Hughes, called his work “simple-minded” and the artist a “pirate”, while another, The Observer’s Peter Conrad, was converted from considering him a “greedy, cynical, overpaid show-off” to an admirer of his “wit and ingenuity in wrestling with notions of mortality and death.”

What’s undeniable, though, is his commercial genius. The sale, entitled Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, grossed £ 111m. With the auction house waiving its usual seller’s commission, deducting the 12% buyer’s premium left Hirst with a staggering £ 96m, just above the upper estimate of £ 98m..

Even had Sotheby’s charged its normal commission, probably 12%, it would still have been a lot less than the 40%-50% most commercial galleries now levy. So while the innovation may have been risky, the potential rewards were considerable – and it paid off.

The previous record for an auction dedicated to a single artist was £ 11.3m, for 88 Picassos at Sotheby’s New York in 1993. Even allowing for inflation, the latest figure is staggering.

Well under 10% of the 223 new works apparently failed to find buyers, while 24 lots went for
£ 1m or more.

Top price was £ 10.3m for The Golden Calf, a bull in formaldehyde adorned with hooves and an 18-carat gold disc above its head – not far short of the 1992 Picasso gross and 40% more than the total of Bonhams’ latest sale of SA art. The estimate for this was
£ 8m-£ 12m.

The theoretical losers on the show were Hirst’s regular galleries, the White Cube in London, which gritted its teeth and congratulated Hirst on being a “mould-breaker without equal”, and New York’s Gagosian. In fact, White Cube founder Jay Jopling bid on many lots, laying out several million pounds, whether to replenish the gallery stock or just to support the market one can only hypothesise.

(Incidentally, recent news that Jopling and his wife of 11 years, photographer and video artist Sam Taylor-Wood, are to part breaks up one of the London art world’s top power couples.)

The decision to sell through the auction is largely credited to Frank Dunphy, Hirst’s business manager and eminence grise for the past 13 years – whose own commission on all Hirst’s sales is thought to be about 10%, making him another major beneficiary of the two-day sale. Dunphy also master-minded Hirst’s expansion into production-line art, through 180 employees and five studios.

Hirst has admitted he had financial problems when he and Dunphy got together, but before the sale Dunphy claimed that the artist is now worth £ 500m. His assets reportedly include a £ 200m art collection and no fewer than 40 properties, and he’ll be able to expand both portfolios after two days that boosted his wealth by 20%.

Typically, Dunphy watched the sale from the back of the hall, but Hirst, who said he found the occasion too stressful, retreated to a snooker hall in north London and kept in touch by phone.