Hirst deems sold work "incomplete"

People are paying HOW MUCH for these!?! If Damien Hirst's art was a bowl of punch, it would be the best advertised, best looking, most talk-about, most decorated and best smelling punch in the world...but it would also taste like shit.

In a rather strange story, at least to me, Hirst's art producing company "science" has recently told a number of galleries not to sell individual painting and prints that were included in his "In a Spin..." series. The series, if you got a "box" straight from Hirst's company, consisted of a painting and a number of prints. Recently, though, prints and paintings have been sold individually and though the art producer never specified before hand, they now have told galleries not to sell the works unless they are included with the entire box, being "complete" in their minds.

I have a bit of a problem with this. First, that anyone is buying these at all anyways...I'm not a Hirst fan and have never been impressed, moved, or convinced by anything he's done (usually the opposite). Especially this series of work "In a Spin" which are literally the exact same as those spin painting you do at the science museum.

Secondly that Hirst, who has made money off of each of the individual sales, is basically saying "that piece you jsut bought for 50,000 pounds? Ya that's not worth anything like that anymore."I don't think an artist should be able to say how you can sell something after the fact. If it is part of a series, sure. If the rule was there from the get-go, OK. But simply because you over-looked it an now have changed your mind? No way! People have spent lots of money on these, you have made money, and now these people basically are stuck with whatever they got or forced to pay you even more to reunite the painting with whatever prints it came with.

I'm not going to accuse the guy of pulling one over on the buyers...perhaps it was an honest mistake*, but selling someone a piece only to come back and say "well if you ever want to actually sell this and make money on your investement, you need to buy another 100,000 pounds worth of art from me." seems like a dishonest, or at least an unsavory, move.

*as much as I would try to give people the benefit of the doubt, even an artist I dislike as much as Hirst, it's a little harder when they had been previously found to have sold a past "spin" painting for 27,000$ only to reveal it was actually the artist's 2-year-old son who had completed the piece...

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Decision-on-Hirsts-leaves-owners-in-a-spin/24529