Thanks to the Gagosian art empire, a ludicrous number of paintings by Damien Hirst are on display right now: 331 of Mr. Hirst's implacably cheerful ''spot'' abstractions spread among Gagosian's 11 galleries in 8 cities on 3 continents. The good news, of course, is that they're not all in one place. And none involve dead animals, maggots, encrusted...
For more than a decade museums have been joining forces to buy expensive art. It's an arrangement that works to everyone's advantage: as prices for contemporary art rise, it's a way to defray costs while allowing a wider public to see significant work. Now the Lipman Family Foundation has gone one better. It has given a seminal sculpture by David...
LONDON -- Just as the financial markets were heading for disaster in 2008, the British artist Damien Hirst snubbed his dealers and persuaded Sotheby's here to sell 223 primarily new artworks. There were dead animals -- sharks, zebras, piglets and even a calf -- floating in giant glass tanks of formaldehyde; cabinets filled with diamonds; and...