Robert Storr Criticizes Damien Hirst and Market Excess in 2009 Art Press Column

In a November 2009 column for Art Press, critic Robert Storr uses the arrest of graffiti artist Cartrain for stealing colored pencils from a Damien Hirst installation at Tate Britain to launch a broader critique of Hirst, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, and Jake and Dinos Chapman. Storr notes that Cartrain faces serious legal and financial penalties, with police valuing the pencils at $800,000 and the installation at over $16 million. He questions who was actually harmed, arguing that Hirst's work—such as the preserved shark "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living"—has become predictable and lacks humor, comparing it unfavorably to the TV series Dexter. Storr suggests Hirst and Koons should step back to allow more substantive art discourse, criticizing the market-driven hype that overshadows more nuanced work. He also dismisses Murakami and the Chapman brothers as overrated, claiming their work fails to achieve genuine transgression. The column calls for a reset in the art world, moving beyond the "enfant terribles" of the boom years.