Damien Hirst Skips the Middleman

By the final fall of the gavel at Sotheby's sale of new works by Damien Hirst yesterday, the world's richest artist (reportedly worth more than $1 billion), was $172 million richer. That was the amount left from the $201 million total after subtracting Sotheby's commission and $6.2 million of charitable donations. But perhaps more important, Mr. Hirst was also comfortable in the knowledge he had made history.

Not only was it the largest single artist sale ever held, with 287 lots; it was a sale that courageously flouted the time-honored tradition in which galleries have had sole lien on the sale of an artist's latest works.

Mr. Hirst has always been his own man. He bypassed the gallery system with the landmark Freeze warehouse exhibition 20 years ago, and has avoided binding contracts with his galleries, White Cube and Gagosian, since. He is on record as a critic of high gallery commission rates on sales, up to 50% for most artists or as little as 20% for him, but his purpose here was, as he said, to "democratize" his market by giving buyers who might be sidelined by prestige-conscious gallery sales teams the opportunity to bid on the open market. The sale was also designed to open up his market to potential buyers who might never have thought of buying his work -- until, that is, they'd been zapped by the publicity machine.

More at Wall Street Journal.