“IT'S CALLED GOSSIP AND OF COURSE IT'S AN OBSESSION OF MINE” -ANDY WARHOL

On Monday, while Lehman Brothers was drawing up its $639 billion bankruptcy papers, a bidder at Sotheby's auction house in central London put up $18.5 million for an improbable, if ironically appropriate, luxury object: the carcass of a bull.
Was this perversely out of touch with the times--the bull, a bizarre eschatological animal, to match the decidedly apocalyptic tone of the news updates from Wall Street? Or was this anonymous bidder helping to kick-start a revolution in the way contemporary art is bought and sold? The answers have to do with the discourse on perverse art. And the way that old ideas of artistic genius, combined with media frenzy, empower the artist to make astronomical sums of money precisely by shocking and offending the public.The bull--or, to use its proper title, "The Golden Calf"--is the work of British artist Damien Hirst. Last week it served as the centerpiece of "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever," an exhibition of 223 new pieces Hirst produced exclusively for Sotheby's (nyse: BID - news - people ) and which, on Monday and Tuesday, managed to fetch almost $200 million, despite reeling financial markets.

-Forbes
Sept 18 2008