Ouch! In London, Art Hurts

British artist's exhibit got much hype, but only because he's famous, say critics

(NEWSER) - “Bad boy of British art" Damien Hirst decided to put his headline-grabbing, conceptual art projects aside and return to painting. Critics, however, are not impressed with the exhibition of 25 new paintings, which opened today:

• “There are many painters in evening classes much worse than Hirst,” writes Tom Lubbock in the Independent. “On the other hand, you'd find quite a few who were better, too. To try to be accurate: Hirst, as a painter, is at about the level of a not-very-promising, first-year art student.”

Miroslaw Balka's How It Is , at the Tate Modern, displays the void

(NEWSER) - The Tate Modern's latest installation is an enormous steel container—100 feet long, 43 feet high, and 30 feet wide—that envelops visitors in total darkness upon entering. How It Is, by Polish artist Miroslaw Balka, is lined with a suede-like material that is 10 times darker than black paint. Named after a Samuel Beckett novel, the piece should be seen as being about everything and nothing, Balka says. More»

Lack of once-plentiful foreign cash hurts auctioneers

(NEWSER) - London became the hottest art market in the world last year, eclipsing New York, but the recession is putting the squeeze on auction houses, the Wall Street Journal reports. Last year’s influx of foreign money has dried up, and sellers are keeping a firm hold on their most desirable pieces. Not only are the auction houses’ offerings meager, but their prices have fallen. More»

Frieze opens to lots of collectors, but few sales

(NEWSER) - As the financial crisis has deepened, the art world seemed strangely impervious to global declines. But at yesterday's opening of the Frieze Art Fair in London, one of the year's biggest events, the slowdown finally caught up to the heady art market. Where once visitors ran maniacally to buy artwork in the first minutes of the fair, this time around, one collector tells Bloomberg, "it's a looker's mood." More»

Unprecedented one-man auction exceeds high estimate

(NEWSER) - Damien Hirst won the biggest gamble of his career at Sotheby's last night—as lot after lot of the artist's work beat high estimates, totaling $127.2 million in sales. While the markets tumbled in New York, bidders in the London saleroom bought up dozens of brand-new Hirsts, from taxidermied animals to abstract paintings, in an auction that could have far-reaching implications for the art world. More»