www.worldwidereview.com

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/9157252/How-Damien-Hirst-tried-to-transform-the-art-market.html

sort of interesting analysis, should you be interested in this stuff? I like the point about it being expensive at point of first sale like a new car!

Puff piece for the upcoming Tate Retrospective - dares the critics to like him - but as with most retros it's more about speed dating him. The Telegraph has no trouble tagging him as a late 90s artist and the critics will hopefully be able to point out in just what ways the Hirst project is anchored in those times. He will be dated, in more ways than one.

It's trivial though to say that collectors continue to clamber even as critics demur - this was ever the case! So who knows more about quality, collectors or critics? The answer, for the patient art historian lies in its influence upon following work (following collectors....) We shall see what we shall see. I don't begrudge him a retro at this point, but pretending prices are any gauge of quality is for cynics, like Hughes. Leave that grumpy old drunk to his self-imposed quandaries.