Hint, something big happened in 2008.

But why are other artists achieving new auction records all the time and Hirst is lagging behind?
The whole market was down in 08/09 but has since more recovered....

Some reading material:


news.artnet.com/market/damien-hirst-beautiful-resales-1346528

www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-false-narrative-of-damien-hirsts-rise-and-fall

interesting - thanks for sharing. The new yorker article is a bit 'rosy' for my liking. It just seems a bit spurious to say "yeah his prices may be down at auction but don't worry he's selling loads privately at really high prices".

Surely a healthy secondary market of any blue chip artist should have liquid sale opportunities - be it back private sale, back to dealer, at auction etc?

Well, to me, one only has to look at Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable and, before that, the Blue Paintings, to see that Hirst doesn't have it at the moment. He feels like Warhol in the late 1970's - early 80's. A shell of what once was. Hell, at one point, Warhol was unsalable and would have gallery shows with absolutely 0 sales. Crazy to imagine these days, but true. Will Hirst reignite, and have this later work get re-contextualized? Likely. Happened to Warhol, and to me Hirst is of that magnitude and, in a way, of that lineage.

That being said, his prints are, most of the time, of the type of work that brought him to popular mass acclaim. They also appeal to the 'common person', the one who knows the spot paintings, knows the Hirst name, but who doesn't keep up with the art world (and has been spared the glut of horrible Hirst over the last decade). On art, the person spending $20k and the person spending $20million are two different creatures. The former can have primarily decorative reasons, the latter is lying if they are saying it isn't primarily an investment vehicle.

And with regards to the 'Hirst is selling well at primary, even if not at auction'. I've read that some of this is 'doubling down' by people with large Hirst collections, hoovering up recent work while holding their noses.  Overspend on recent to shore up the 300 Hirsts you have sitting in a freeport in Switzerland.  I don't know about that, you'd think they would want to do the hoovering in public, at auction.  Then again, there is an enormous volume of work out there at auction.  To me, likely because it makes since, is that I've also heard that it is package dealing on the part of galleries. 'You want XYZ hot artist? If so, you have to buy 2 recent Hirsts for every 1 painting of XYZ you get'.  Want to ingratiate yourself with Gagosian Gallery, better buy some Hirsts.  Finally, I've read that major collectors have actually partnered in the production costs of Treasures, so 'sales' to them is a much more complex thing to analyze.