Damien Hirst is British. He was forty two years old on July 21, 2007 when one of his achievements obtained in an auction a price till then never reached by a living artist. His work Lullaby Spring (spring Lullaby, 2002) reached in the house Sotheby’s of London a number near to 13 million euros. The piece in question is a metallic first-aid kit of drugstore, which contains tablets. In full summer, Hirst achieves a new record with his work molded in platinum, a skull of the XVIIIth century, splashed with 8.601 diamonds, For The Love Of God (For the God's love). This work would have been sold in 50 million pounds sterling (about 73 million euros) by the London gallery White Cube to a group of investors who asked for anonymity. As the only certainty for his detractors, the work has, at least, the value of his 1.106 carats (dears in about 19 million euros).

Although the spring lends for all kinds of flowerings, it is not sure of that is responsible for this accented prices increase. Neither it can give itself for insurance that the piece and his “6.136 identical tablets each one manually ”, as his title role remembers it learnedly, it has influenced with all his weight the spirit of the offerers. Where should the causes be looked? In the publicity that Sotheby’s could give to his sale of June 21, 2007? In the dynamism of the market of London, more suitable art to be supported British artists? In the personality of Hirst and the power of his network of merchants, gallery owners and collectors, particularly dynamic this evening? After everything, June 21 is the first day of the summer.

Damien Hirst crossed at the end of the eighties with Charles Saatchi, a British businessman, owner of one of the most important agencies of publicity of the world, Saatchi and Saatchi Co. Both personalities are completed of marvel. The provocative extravagance of the first one fills with enthusiasm the sense of communication of other. The artist and the collector quickly turned into one. And like proof that Saatchi has good smell, Hirst received in 1995 the very coveted Turner Prize (3), which the Museum Tate Britain grants every year from 1984 (except in 1990) to an artist of the British ambience.

If the things look a little more closely, it is discovered that the Award Turner was founded by Patrons of New Art, a group of London patrons created for … Saatchi, in association with the Tate. There is no doubt that the presence of Saatchi should have floated over the jury, favoring his election of Mother and child, a calf cut in two, immersed in a solution of formaldehyde. This decision was accumulating many advantages: in addition to the election of a piece of big value mediático, for happiness of his new sponsor, the television channel Channel Four, the award was dedicating the Saatchi look at the same time that it was increasing the value of the pieces that he had already acquired. For his part, the biggest collector of British contemporary art was supporting, by means of his continuous buys, the Hirst quotation, validating financially the intellectual decision of the jury. For the speculators, the signs were clear: institution and market (reduced to the beginning only to Saatchi, but provided with a financial power without equal) were going at the same time. The speculators could not do another thing to continue them. Three years later, the sales of Hirst had grown 1.039 % (4).

François Pinault, the giant of the French luxury, inaugurated the Palazzo Grassi of Venice designating like governing to the French ex-minister of culture, Jean-Jacques Aillagon. The real estate promoter and millionaire American Eli Broad threw his own contemporary art museum – Los Angeles County Museum of Art – under the baton of the architect Renzo Piano, known in France for having taken part in the achievement of the Center Georges Pompidou. One of the first buyers of contemporary Chinese art, the Belgian baron Guy Ullens, created his museum - foundation in Peking (The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art), the first one of his type in China, resting on scientific personnel originated from the best institutional centers. Supported by the Swiss auctioneer Simon de Pury, Saatchi will inaugurate this summer his new contemporary art museum in Chelsea, in center of London. As in Tate Modern, with which he thinks to compete, the entry will be free for the million visitors who is waited. The gallery will be flanked by rooms of class, in order to which teachers and students could familiarize themselves with the exposed works, along with experts.

For Aude de Kerros, enyasista and painter, the big collectors redeem now the compass role in the ambience of the contemporaries art, because “los traditional criteria that base the value of a work on the markets of the ancient art, of the impressionists and modern ones, already are not applied to the individual market of the contemporary art. Now when it bases the value it is not the work but the network. The guarantee for the buyer is not the value of the artist and of the work, but the power of the gallery owner and the soundness of his collectors' network (6) ”. As there indicates Georges Armaos, historian of the art, taken charge of a part of the clientele of Gagosian Gallery, in New York, one of the most powerful American galleries, “es his truth that works buy a collectors' big quantity in recognized galleries, because they know that the gallery owner will guarantee both the perpetuity of the work and the support of his market. But also a collectors' fair amount exists, in my opinion the majority, especially between the Europeans, who buy works with which they want to live, more here or beyond any market consideration ”.

Perhaps, like any economic market, that of the contemporary art needs for his good functioning to know and jerarquizar his quality criteria; there is nothing surprising, of that time, if these must be looked in the potency of the network, and if one is interested less by the works than by those who deal with them. This proves the Anglo-Saxon publication Art Review that every year the very awaited “Power 100 publishes ”, that it includes to the hundred most influential personalities in the world of the contemporary art (7). Although there are few artists in his ranking (19 %), being between the first Damien Hirst (6th place) and Jeff Koons (13th place), the participation of the collectors, on the other hand, happened from 19 % in 2002 to 31 % in 2007; they are still gallery owners and intermediaries (22 %). As these collectors are where the money abounds, neither we must be surprised on having discovered that 74 % has American and British nationality.

“A comparison title, the gallery Gagosian [I presented both in Beverly Hills and in New York, London and Rome] has an annual invoicing at least fifteen times superior to ours, which is 15 million euros ”, there states Jean Frémon, the associate director of the Gallery Lelong, one of the most famous French galleries of contemporary art. “Como the buyer chooses often artists of his own nationality, sometimes for simple reasons of geographical proximity, the Anglo-Saxon artists are today between better quoted ”.

“Aunque do not import who can turn either into plastic, or amount who it tries to be, they all will not be able to achieve it. Because it is necessary to have a hearing minimum. Certainly this is not new. But what yes it is, is that there is no logical tie between the fact of following a typical, professional or educational trip, and the securing of this hearing. To be successful, now it is enough to be able to sell ”, was pointing out the philosopher Christian Delacampagne (8). This way, the more invisible is the art according to the traditional artistic cánones, the more visible debit to be the artist in his subversive records. And in this, the living artists have considerable victory letters in relation to his biggest, since collectors can find and make know for them, what is legal; but also to answer to the demand, what is less legal if it is considered that an artist is defined first of all for taking risks and for the creation of works for that the public does not wait.

In this point, the paintings of Theo Van Gogh might rival with the facilities of Damien Hirst, since so much some like others have provoked, each one in his moment, hostile reactions. Nevertheless, the first one died in the misery, while the second one possesses at the age of forty a fortune that Sunday Times estimates in 270 million euros. Then: what are the magic passes?

Others take as models stars who hope that they should be the first buyers and the determinants of a future, more influential fashion as a subject mediático will arise necessarily in the means from the work and of the artist. The Briton Marc Quinn represents the naked body of the model Kate Moss. The American Jeff Koons, that of Michael Jackson in company of his chimpanzee Bubbles (acquired in Sotheby’s for a Norwegian shipowner in 5,6 million dollars). Koons received well that had to answer to the expectations of his clientele, and feed this way his imaginary one, laying hands on a formal repertoire that him is familiar. This way a giant pink heart, a blue or green diamond, a pink panther of china, although they disconcert to the majority, those love that they recognize there the plastic universe of his daily emotions. For example, the first-aid kit of drugstore (Lullaby) of Hirst was part of the furniture of a very crowded restaurant of the quarter of Notting Hill (Pharmacy), where young boys were strolling with shirts of surgeon designed by Prada, before Damien Hirst was sold by his owner ….

For Caroline Bourgois, director of the Regional Fund of Contemporary art of the Parisian Region, named Plateau (9), the new fortunes are in “la culture of the immediateness. The forms must be understandable and immediately seductive. To look a Jeff Koons demands less effort than other artists ”. But if Jeff Koons is so popular, it is due to the fact that he has been able to make appreciate by the stars (to what undoubtedly he contributed his marriage with the Cicciolina, ex-papisa of the porn). Material for the press of the heart, the artist has provided to his pieces of this aura mediática indispensable for the ego of his buyers. The paradox is that they are the proper buyers those who grant to the piece his icon condition. At what price? To the highest.

Would we speak, if not, of Hanging Heart, this giant chrome pink heart knotted with a golden tape, if the piece had not reached an amazing price in the sale rooms? To praise the work, Sotheby’s remembered the thousands of working time that Koons (or more precisely the workers of his workshop) had dedicated to the piece. Had the house remained short of arguments, to reactivate criteria that were thought inappropriate for the artistic world? What matters. From November 14, 2007 it has an implacable argument: the giant pink heart was sold in 23,6 million dollars (about 16 million euros), that is to say, a price that overcame the record reached by Hirst. And the explanation explodes at once: “Si there was nothing in her: do you think really that a collector would have paid this price? ” And, in effect, now this price exists … so much less debatable because, the higher it is, the more scarce there turns the aptitude to criticize the piece, because they all, from the seller up to the auctioneer, impelled it up to justify at the same time his work and his revenue. “En reality, an observer of the market concludes ironically, the buyer has obtained not a piece but a price, a price that constitutes the whole value of the piece. Only that the piece is sometimes so weak that one wonders if the money has still some value in these circles where it abounds ”.

Little matters, the contemporary art goes well. It places the acquired fortunes quickly. “Es the transfer that must be paid to enter a circuit of relations where each one is judged for criteria of solvency, a right of spectacular entry for echoes mediáticos, particularly important for the new businessmen of the emergent countries ”, mentions Aude de Kerros. Accessible and not elitist, like it Jeff Koons proclaims, it turns even into the coadjutant mediático, commercial and democratic of some institutions that think too many encorsetadas for the weight of his history. At the end of 2008, the works of Jeff Koons will have a place in the Versailles gardens. What of course François Pinault will like, one of his big collectors. Now then, Aillagon, the new president of the Public Establishment of the Museum and of the National Ambience of Versailles, was till now the director of Palazzo Grassi, property of Pinault. Interests convergence? On the other hand, Pinault is also the Christie’s owner from 1998 …

Of course, the emergent countries are already not isolated from this phenomenon, as his wealths develop. After China: India, Russia, Brazil? “Los buyers know, observes Hervé Perdriolle, specialist in Indian art, that the prices of the prompt Indian contemporary art will continue to the growth of the country. The positive point of this sudden interest is to grant finally a financial recognition to big artists who were still ignored in the international scene ”. The fairs multiply in the whole world, the sale offices in auctions reinforce his attraction power with more and more powerful marketing instruments. “Allí where we were going so far as to be interested in to hundred persons for the first sale of a work, today we come perhaps to 10, 20 ó 30 times more ”, confirms Grégoire Billault, the director of the department of contemporary art of Sotheby’s. And since they all know, the prices rise with the impulse of slightly numerous auctions. Also they have been “aumentados ” because of it house of sales that any observers do not hesitate to qualify of “impulsores to the crime of the market (10) ”.

What is in judgment cloth is the system of guaranteed prices: to persuade an owner to sell a work, the auctioneer assures a high total to him, and anyone is the result of the auction, the payment of the difference stays in charge of the sales house if the price really successful was low. Then, the house is going to put into practice everything necessary to value the piece, what, in general, it will spend less for a study in depth of the work (skill, material, adventurousness of the topic …) than for the capitalization of everything what it could satisfy to a clientele with fortune but not necessary prepared. How, for example, the fact that a work has belonged to a prestigious owner.

Desmaterializado, the market of the contemporary art mundializa more easily still. Galleries, houses of auction, specializing databases, offer in line all kinds of informations for the buyer particularly avezado in the new technologies. Papers, analysis and studies on the speculative potential of the coveted pieces is loved particularly the hedge funds (speculative funds or funds vultures) that they can invest in the ambience of the contemporary art because they have instruments more adapted to the analytical complexity of his speculative projections. Artprice.com, world leader of the data banks on quotation and indexes of the art (25 million indexes and results of sales that cover 405.000 artists), it gives, by means of payment, studies, analysis, statistics and information econométricos. The most recent (January, 2008) calculate, in real-time, the confidence of the actors of the artistic market to continue his reactions in relation to topics of strict actuality (stock-exchange changes, geopolitical events resulted from a sale mediática …).

Some artists, like Emmanuel Barcilon, interviewed in the fair of discoveries of the contemporary creation (11), refuse to enter this gear assembly. “Cuántos more events there is, more it is necessary to produce. And how much more produces one, less capable one is of regenerating and of creating. Finally, for me, to enter this system is to deny my artist's quality ”. He says that he does not want to realize any more than one pieces two weeks for year, which would be immediately acquired. “Esto can be a problem in the current system ”, there trusts his gallery owner, Marc Hourdequin, of Dukan and Houdequin, in Marseilles. Because the market, although it does not come down to his extraordinary quotations, by force of mediatización contaminates the fans of the art and leads them to having speculative reflexes. “Escuchan more than they look, a gallery owner says desolated. But how to censure them: when a quotation is achieved in fifteen days! When the culture is promoted less that his result … One ends up by wishing a financial crisis to purge some indecent quotations and sanear the market. And to find the artistic values again behind the financial values. Let's not forget that the market of the art lives to the rhythm of the business cycles, and that in low tide only the big stones do not turn out to be miserable ”.

For the time being, the actors are glad on still having seen to some locomotives pushing the market towards the rise: there are some other signs destined to calm the investors. The crisis of suboccupies first place, mortgage credits of high risk, it is present in the head of all. But these signs do not mean anything for the most prudent. It is true that Damien Hirst belongs to the group of investors that needed anonymity for the acquisition of his work For The Love Of God … The artist had already repurchased in 2003 his pieces to his ancient collector Saatchi to control better his market (12). And it does very little it gave him four facilities to the Tate. Without any doubt to obtain a prestigious shop window, to consolidate his quotation, to calm to his network of gallery owners and collectors, and to the sale houses, any of which –que quote in bag as Sotheby’s – turn out to be forced to satisfy his shareholders - collectors. Officially, it would be a question of being grateful to the Gallery Tate, which had crowned it, but which already does not have the means of acquiring his pieces mediáticas, that transform to the museums into trains bogeys. But, after everything, why might not a head of rotten cow be part of the art that is done, when the art emptied of his traditional “pretensiones of esthetic autonomy, Hans Belting (13) remembers, it is understood now like a system, between others, of comprehension and of symbolic reproduction of the world ”. Although it is in decomposition.