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Article: Damien Hirst to Dealers: Drop Dead.
- Article from:
- The New York Observer (New York, NY)
- Article date:
- September 19, 2008
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 The New York Observer. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The $12 Million Stuffed Shark:
The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art
By Don Thompson
Palgrave MacMillan, 256 pages, $24.95
On Sept. 15 and 16, Sotheby's auctioned off 223 new works by British artist-provocateur Damien Hirst, who raked in $200.7 million (having already, over the course of his relatively brief career, amassed a purported billion--billion--dollar fortune). I know: Your eyes are glazing over at news of yet another record-setting auction of outrageous contemporary art. But that's because you've misplaced the emphasis--it's not that it's Damien Hirst or that it's contemporary, it's that the works are new, as in produced within the last two ...