Hirst's The Golden Calf, a bull preserved in a tank of formaldehyde, with its head crowned by a gold disc, sold for the equivalent of almost $18.4 million at this week's auction in London.
If you have read in recent days about the massive auction - direct to market- by Damien Hirst which netted $95 million pounds sterling for the artist, then think about what he has managed to achieve. If you are perplexed, consider.
With a team of around 200 technicians he has done what many believe to be impossible. But lets look a little closer at what he has done in the major piece The Golden Calf.
Firstly he has challenged the existing art order. (this is right up there with Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Leonardo sketching corpses under cover of darkness. Secondly he has utilised the best materials - gold for the hooves, sun disk and display case - and a massive Carrara marble plinth. And thirdly he has created works with a very keen awareness of predecessors and antecedents ranging from Egyptian art through to Duchamp. At once very cool, classical and ironically, quite restrained in tone. The bull itself is a potent symbol from Mycenae to Spain. Exactly the qualities that the best art displays.