Following up on the Bad Case of the Mondays; or, the Golden Spike.
On Tuesday, I wrote about the financial mess on Wall Street, and pointed out that the gold-medal-winning US women’s soccer team rang the closing bell on Monday. “There’s no investment like gold,” I wrote.
Gold! I should have put my money where my blog is. Wednesday, the price of gold rose more in value that day than it had on any other, ever, according to the AP.
To give you a sense of the increase, here’s a chart of gold futures from the Financial Times.
Not bad. So we’ve got more winners this week, in addition to the soccer team and Damien Hirst: people who owned gold before Wednesday. Good for them.
And as for Hirst, whom I also mentioned in that Tuesday post, the total for his two-day auction came to $199 million. And maybe his work is as reliable an investment as gold (remember the Golden Calf). Don’t know what might bring the value of his work down, other than a massive realignment of perspective. That Hirst doesn’t even make some of his own pieces apparently hasn’t hurt the prices. According to the Economist, Hirst has a set of workshops that sound like a cross between Willy Wonka’s factory and Dafen, China. This probably just helps add to the mystique:
In London Mr Hirst presides over two large industrial units producing the butterfly-wing pictures and his photo-realist paintings. In the Gloucestershire countryside he leases two wartime aircraft hangers for the manufacture of the spot paintings, the spin works and the formaldehyde tanks. He also has a large workshop and an exhibition studio. More than 180 people work for him, creating Damien Hirsts. Two specialists oversee the formaldehyde unit, which on a visit in July contained four dead ponies, a wild boar, an upended cow and, in good “Godfather” style, a horse’s head in a plastic bag.
In the workshop three women were talking about the “Hedgehog”, a device attached to a Hoover. It is a small plastic tube with 20 holes cut into it in which are inserted cut-down cigarettes, some ringed with lipstick. Switch on the Hoover and, hey presto, instant cigarette butts for lot 134 (top estimate, £300,000). In another workshop, three fabricators were painting precisely measured round circles at regular intervals on a white background. These are the famed spot paintings that Mr Hirst says were inspired by playing snooker. The fabricators choose which colour each spot is to be, and use ordinary household paint to apply the shades. The butterfly pictures are made by fabricators who are given the dimensions needed, but are otherwise left to themselves to choose the colours and designs they want. Having given his final approval—sometimes, one fabricator says, only by looking at a photograph—Mr Hirst signs and dates the back of the work.
Just sign here, and we’ll take care of the rest.
Filed under: art, money
Tags: Damien Hirst, gold, Wall Street
