Why would anyone even consider paying this much money for the shark? Part of the answer is that in the world of contemporary art, branding can substitute for critical judgment, and lots of branding was involved here. The question was important because $12 million represented more money than had ever been paid for a work by a living artist, other than Jasper Johns – more than for a Gerhard Richter, a Robert Rauschenberg, or a Lucian Freud. The shark had been caught in 1991 in Australia, and prepared and mounted in England by technicians working under the direction of British artist Damien Hirst.Īnother concern was that while the shark was certainly a novel artistic concept, many in the art world were uncertain whether it qualified as art. It is illustrated in the center portion of the book.
The taxidermy fifteen-foot tiger shark “sculpture” was mounted in a giant glass vitrine and creatively named The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. One problem for the agent trying to sell the stuffed shark was the $12 million asking price for this work of contemporary art.* Another was that it weighed just over two tons, and was not going to be easy to carry home.
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