Damien Hirst’s ‘middling merchandise’

Damien Hirst's audacious decision to sell more than 200 art works directly through Sotheby's of London this month, cutting out his dealers Jay Jopling and Larry Gagosian, has got him onto the cover of today's Time magazine (pictured), a rare accolade for an artist. But it's not all good news for the man Time calls the 'rock star artist'. Richard Lacayo, author of the article, suggests that the work on offer is of variable quality.

While Lacayo praises certain works, singling out a work in formaldehyde, The Golden Calf, a bull with a golden crown above its head, he says that many of the lots are of patchy quality, claiming that "Hirst's career always threatens to amount to a core of genuine invention surrounded by a vast penumbra of middling merchandise".

Still, Hirst should be glad the revered Robert Hughes is no longer Time's art writer. Hughes is well known for his hostility towards Hirst and some of his fellow YBAs (Young British Artist) and could have been expected to dig the knife in. At a Royal Academy dinner in 2004, he questioned what was so radical about Hirst's work, saying: "A string of brushmarks on a lace collar in a Velasquez can be as radical as a shark that an Australian caught for a couple of Englishmen some years ago and is now murkily disintegrating in its tank on the other side of the Thames. More radical, actually."

Needless to say, Hirst, who talked to Edward Helmore for The First Post today, is far too rich and successful to take offence. In his opinion, the Sotheby's sale is an exercise in "democracy", allowing everyone ­at least those with at least a spare £40,000 ­ to own a piece of his work. "There ar only two important people in any transaction - the buyer and the seller, the guy who makes it and the guy who buys it," says Hirst. "Galleries are only middlemen."

The Time article points out that Hirst is so well-off that he can stay at Claridge's whenever he visits London. What it doesn't say, which is known in art circles, is that Hirst is actually so magnificently wealthy that he can afford a permanent suite at Claridge¹s ­ and another room at the hotel he uses as a London studio.