A few months ago, businessman/artist Damien Hirst got in a bit of trouble for misdating his works. He's very well known for his period of work involving the preserved bodies of animals in aquariums, and has continued to create pieces in this style up to the present. Or, at least, his studio did.It's a little tricky to claim if startists like this really make their own work or not. That's a different topic altogether. Anyway, Hirst falsely dated multiple pieces created in the last few years as being fabricated in the 90s. When that came under scrutiny, his team got all art school legalese about it. It's conceptual, the concept came about in the 90s, therefore this piece is from then, yadda yadda.
Another controversy is in the works now, involving more recent pieces of his, but this time they feature that newfangled NFT technology that the kids are all on about. Different art project, same old legalese hat. Maeve McClenaghan with The Guardian:
Their accounts suggest at least 1,000 – and possibly several thousand – paintings in The Currency series were made during the two-year period. They were produced by dozens of painters hired at Hirst's company Science Ltd at two studios, in Gloucestershire and London, in what one source described as a "Henry Ford production line". Each painting was marked with a microdot, an embossed stamp of authenticity and a pencil-written title, date and signature on the back. Dates attributed to artworks are widely understood to refer to the year they were completed. Contacted for comment, lawyers for Hirst and Science did not dispute that at least 1,000 of the paintings the artist said were dated 2016 were painted several years later. … [but] denied Hirst had been deliberately misleading, arguing that it was his "usual practice" to date physical works in a conceptual art project with the date of the project's conception, which in the case of The Currency was 2016.
At least he's honest in his trickery. This series' title, Currency, tells viewers exactly what his intentions are, it's even a bit on the nose.
I'm of the belief though that Hirst deliberately makes himself newsworthy with controversies like this in order to sustain his name and income well after when his star should have faded. The Young British Artists are all gray-haired millionaires now, maybe let's focus on something else. Sorry.
Previously: Artist Damien Hirst falsely dated recent sculptures to noteworthy period
• Billionaire art collectors deceived by Damien Hirst shark sculpture misdated by 18 years
