Damien Hirst: Welcome to the Machine

So everyones talking about it, Not only did Damien Hurst make 200 million dollars during his 2-day firesale auction via Sotheby's London, He made it while the rest of the world's economy was going to hell in a handbasket. I just found out that the government bailing out of Freddie Mac & all the elite corporates is going to cost each of us individually over $1100!! yo money... Fuck we're all fucking broke and losing our well invested portfolios by the NY minute while Hirst, this motha fucka just made definitely over $160 million after Sotheby's gets its chunk.

You know I never REALLY knew who Damien Hirst was or what his work looked like. Until he made that nigga rich skull encrusted with diamonds. All I knew is what my retarded art history education taught me. Damien Hirst is the leader of the YBA. YBA? Young British Artist. Apparently back in the 80's finally some British birds and blokes finally managed to shock and offend the the masses with their art enough to give them credibility. WOW!!! Britian's cool in modern art for the first time! Well their creditability really came from the $$$$, yup the lavish Lord Satchi dished out millions to the YBA's to get them going

I dont know how this whole YBA thing caught on... i mean the actually name Young British Artist. What a crap name! Doesn't sound very modern to me, sounds like the name of a traditional art institute, high academia. pewwwww But regaredless

wow dont i know a lot, thanks college! but really the saddest fucking thing is that I can drop this whole narrative bout the rise of the YBA but I couldnt name you one piece of artwork made by one of these mother fuckers and I cant name you one other artist besides Damien Hirst! Why cant I just be brain-dead and from Nor Cal! And now guess what? Everybody knows Damien Hirst because of his $200 million.

I swear every articled i have read is about the externalities of his art: the factory of anonymous people he employs to create 'his' art, or obstacles collectors face when trying to 'preserve' Damien's work, or the implications of the British art scene, or the trails of money it leaves haphazardly behind it.

Alsa, a truely conceptual artist. HE doesnt make anything, just his name, his brand, his machine. He controls the MEANS of production AND distribution. He has cut out all the middlemen. No more art dealers, Damien goes right to the world's premier art auction house. But when it comes to the question of pure art, Damien Hirst has begun to see himself as an unnecessary middleman.

Damien only needs to exist in your head. He has 6 art studios all operating under an assumed identity, Damien Hirst. Each studio simultaniously guided by his aesthetic forethought, yet he has not even physically seen many of these studios. Damien Hirst does not even touch his art anymore. The object only takes on its identity when Damien signs a photograph of the work, a representation of it.

As Damien continues detach himself physically from the art objects he produces, Art itself is purified. What we now call modern art has as one of it basic tenants a steadfast adherence to exposing modernity essence, rapid change in a society of spectacle. The physical object for the first time became overshadowed by his shadow. Receding farther and farther back into the cool shady conceptual realm, intangible as modernity itself. Damien has pushed the inevitable extreme; He cut out... himself. HE is a crab who has built its own shell, a shell of sheer force. A shell that may become more than just an extension of creature who dwelth. Like a crazy computer programs that turns on its makers in those sci-fi movies. Full of information but empty. He makes authorship translucent as only Warhol could do.
Damien Hirst has become the ghost we are all looking for in art, a deserted shell. An object that once was... a self-annihilating nothing.

-Avant God