The best way to be a well-respected artist is to never make any money, and to refuse to let your art "become a commodity." (i.e. to be a terrible business person.) Look at Banksy! Artists went crazy over Banksy, and they still do to some extent, but when he started having gallery showings, he lost a lot of cachet with "real artists."

 

One of the criticisms most often leveled at Hirst is that he doesn't create his art with his own hands. His (much-loathed by art snobs) "dot paintings" are made by paid assistants who are given little in the way of direction. Hirst instructs them to paint the dots to a specific circumference, and in a certain grid, and to never repeat the same color twice. Then he lets them go to work, and he takes all the credit - so say his detractors.

 

But what does it mean to "create art"? If Shakespeare writes a play, and a bunch of complete strangers are paid to perform that play, and you sit in the audience and watch it, are you watching a "Shakespeare play"? Or are you watching a bunch of people get paid to act out Shakespeare's instructions, while he gets all the glory?

 

What is the art? The making of the thing, or the thing itself?

 

Hirst's work tweaks the public's sensibility, and pushes the envelope of what it means to have a brand. Hirst gleefully commoditizes himself, and has made millions of dollars doing it. I imagine in an alternate world where Hirst's works never became lucrative, he would be one of that world's most well-respected artists. "Poor Hirst," people would sigh, "Such a genius, and yet he lived such a miserable life of poverty. He never got the kind of respect and recognition he deserved."

 

"I could make that," people say. They could, but the fact is that they didn't.

 

At the very least, you might think other artists would find it delightfully hilarious that the world of art buyers could be convinced to pay $8 million for a dead shark in a glass box.