PANTS ON FIRE

Damien Hirst Backdated a Shark That Sold for $8 Million: Report

Experts said Hirst shirked contemporary art norms that take dates of origin seriously.

A formaldehyde shark made by contemporary artist Damien Hirst was misleadingly dated to the 1990s, even though it was actually made in 2017, a Guardian investigation found. The 13-foot long shark sold for about $8 million to a pair of billionaire brothers in 2018 and was unveiled as “The Unknown (Explored, Explained, Exploded), 1999” with the supposed date of completion as part of the title. When the true 2017 completion date was discovered, Hirst’s company claimed the artist simply doesn’t play by normal standards. They said the 1999 date referred to the birth of the “intention and the idea” behind the work, which was more important than its physical completion. While it’s true that there are no hard and fast rules governing artwork-dating, as the Hirst’s company argued, art experts told the newspaper Hirst’s practice was misleading. “There is definitely best practice, which is to give the date of physical creation of a work, or if there is a wide difference between conception and creation, to give both dates,” Jo Baring, the director of Britain’s Ingram Collection, said.