“The original shark, it turns out, rotted.”

Gold, Golden, Gilded, Glittering – The Unexpected Double History Of Banking And The Art World

In fact, we have long entrusted the task of representing our ideas of value to members of two professions that might seem to have little in common: banking and art. And, in the last seven hundred years or so, it has happened more than once that visual and financial inventors have come up with strikingly similar representations. There is more than a shadow of resemblance between the purchase of the Hirst skull in 2007 and the mortgage-backed-securities debacle that made of Lehman Brothers in the following year one of the great public pictures of vanitas we’ve had. And, when you look further into these intersections, you often find that what is really at stake is a change in the way we feel and understand time.

Steven Cohen, owner of Damien Hirst’s (previously) famous The Physical Impossibility Of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living, is under investigation for insider trading.

How Larry Gagosian Is Like Goldman Sachs: short answer, by representing both buyer and seller.

Slate: Why The Art World Is So Loathsome

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