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Read the case below and answer the following: Is Damien Hirst famous because of his work and its shock value, because of Charles Saatchi, or is Hirst...
Read the case below and answer the following: Is Damien Hirst famous because of his work and its shock value, because of Charles Saatchi, or is Hirst "famous because he's famous?
CREATING A NEW BRAND FOR A NEW BUSINESS
Contemporary Art
Contemporary art, often defined as nontraditional art from the 1970s, can sell for incredible sums of money. Damien created a square array of colored dots that have been sold for up to $1,500,000. Hundreds of these have been made and sold. While still an unknown artist, Hirst sold a work that consisted of flies being hatched and attracted to a decaying cow's head only to be zapped by a bug zapper to Charles Saatchi, the advertising executive and prominent collector. It was called "A Thousand Years" and was said to depict life and death. Saatchi, who owns over 3,000 contemporary artworks, is generous about loaning them to museums if they agree to display other pieces (so that they can be said to have been displayed in the museum). There are dozens of artists who command high prices: On Kawara paints a date such as Nov 8, 1989 on a canvas. There are approximately 2,000 in existence; one sold for $500,000 in 2006 at a Christie's auction. Christie's and Sotheby's are the two most prestigious auction houses. It has been estimated that a painting will get 20 percent more if sold at one of these two auction houses, in part, because of their brands. Christopher Wool sold a painting of fifteen stenciled letters that spelled Rundogrundogrun for $1.24 million in 2005. In 2008 a seven-foot Mark Rothko painting that had been owned by David Rockefeller (who bought it in 1960 for $8,500) sold at Sotheby's for $72.8 million, nearly three times more than the previous high for a Rothko. Jeff Koons, famous for making vacuum cleaners an art object, sold life-size a sculpture of Michael Jackson and his pet monkey for $5.6 million despite the fact that there were two other copies of the piece. The fact that the other copies were owned by the San Francisco MOMA and a prominent collector actually enhanced the value of the third piece. Tracey Emin, an artist with a reputation for taking on taboo topics with an autobiographical flair, established a style and the premium prices that go with it by creating a bad girl image. For example, she posed nude for commercials, created a tent embroidered with names of her past lovers, and appeared on British television so drunk that she had no memory of it. Why these prices? One hypothesis is that this art is objectively exceptional and its high quality merits a premium price. That is demonstratively false. Consider the following. There was a painting of Joseph Stalin, worthless until Damien Hirst painted a red nose on the subject and signed his name—it then sold for $250,000. A Jackson Pollack look-alike painting was bought at a flea market. A series of experts could not ascertain if it was an authentic Pollack or not. The same painting was either worth a few thousand or tens of millions depending on whether it was deemed authentic. An auction professional once said, "Never underestimate how insecure buyers are about contemporary art, and how much they always need reassurance." What makes these prices even more puzzling is the fact that several of the top artists do not do their own work. Andy Warhol famously did little of his own artwork. Hirst has a staff of 20 or so who do all of his work including the colored spots.
So the question is why do these artists attract such prices? And more basically, how does a painter create a brand that will command such fantastic sums? These questions are more general than they might seem. There are many businesses for which it is not possible to objectively know the value of the product or service. Most customers lack the information and often the expertise to evaluate service firms. There are also products, such as motor oil, for which it is not possible to judge the quality. Even products such as cars or computers are difficult to evaluate because they are complex and specifications do not tell the whole story. Furthermore, even if a person took the time to pour through Consumer Reports, it is not clear that its recommendations will reflect the right decision criteria for that customer.
