Art for the sake of...

Damien Hirst: The Death of Art Explained

"Apart from the art market, who is this Damian Hirst fellow anyway? For me, he can be understood as a cultural bell-weather or the proverbial canary in the coal mine. The signal he sends: the art world at large is a "dead herring in the moonlight. It is shiny, but it stinks!" Hirst’s controversial pieces have outraged some and delighted others. They say he offers morality art. Huh? I thought that was for wonderful painters like William Hogarth, and his satirical moral telling."

and

"And what does Hirst have to say for himself? Not much, I am afraid. One of his more memorable quotes: "greed is good for artists." Or when Hirst was interviewed at his studio once, and watching an assistant paint his polka dot pieces, he quipped, she can f--king paint. Yes, he has someone else do the painting for him!"

are two good quotes from the article.

For me, I just don't know where he's getting his money from to do his art. His works may be pricey to purchase, but they're not cheap to produce either. As well, his art is in the telling, the story, contained in the piece, and not the piece itself. A skull covered with diamonds is very much like table lamps covered with little seashells, which craftspersons have been doing for decades for the tourist trade, the difference being that one is too expensive for a craftsperson to produce. Strangely, the story they tell is the same...