Hirst ploughs on with paint
Damien Hirst’s latest paintings go on view on Sunday at Houghton Hall in Norfolk. Since critics savaged his last few painting exhibitions, Hirst has presumably been busy thinking about how to rescue his reputation as a painter. Or perhaps he hasn’t, because, despite the reviews, the paintings still sold very well.
This is the curious thing about the Hirst market: in spite of the sustained dip in auction room prices for his older work (a butterfly painting he made for his one-man auction at Sotheby’s that year sold this month for half the price made previously) the primary-market works, those fresh out of his studio, all sell very well.
At his most recent selling exhibition (at the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles), a star-studded crowd turned out and all of the paintings – ravishingly beautiful extensions of his spot paintings that lie somewhere between the pointillism of Seurat and the more casual brush markings of Bonnard – sold out, their prices pitched between $500,000 and $1.7 million (£356,000£1.2 million).
For anyone wanting to take a punt on his future market, the art at Houghton is not for sale. That’s not to say you can’t put in a bid for when the exhibition closes in July, though.