At the (RED) auction last night, eight works by Damien Hirst were sold – if you include the one he gave to Banksy to deface. Between them, they sold for $20,955,000 – call it half of the $42,584,300 that the auction’s 72 lots raised in total. It’s also an average of $2,619,375 per Hirst. And remember, these aren’t classic Hirst pieces: they were all made, brand new, specifically for this auction.
It almost goes without saying that these works were all made not by Hirst himself but rather by his army of low-paid assistants. Hirst is a business, and qua business he must have pretty much the highest profit margins in the world.