Damien Hirst, World’s Wealthiest Artist, Claims $1.7 Million in Government Aid

Conceptual artist Damien Hirst, who has made a profession of elevating eyebrows with works comparable to these respectively comprising a useless tiger shark suspended in a Lucite tank full of formaldehyde and a human cranium comprised of platinum and paved with diamonds, has executed it once more—although this time by way of a fiscal, slightly than inventive, endeavor. Hirst, whose private wealth is estimated at roughly $396 million, utilized for and acquired £1.3 million ($1.7 million) in authorities pandemic aid support by means of his firm Science (UK) Ltd. In response to the Daily Mail, the enterprise, by means of which Hirst employs various studio assistants to assist him churn out his Spot and Cherry Blossom work, reaped a reported £18.2 million ($24 million) through the Covid disaster, turning an astounding £3.5 million ($4.6 million) revenue in 2020, with gross sales leaping within the first months of the disaster.
The Observer moreover reviews that Science (UK) Ltd.in 2021 acquired a three-year, £15 million ($20 million) Covid emergency mortgage imply to cowl enterprise interruption and provided by the British authorities. On the time, the corporate’s artwork holdings had been valued at £42.7 million ($56 million). Hirst laid off sixty-three staff throughout the identical span of time. Hirst, a Turner Prize winner and maybe essentially the most infamous of the YBAs (Younger British Artists), who gained fame within the late Eighties, in 2018 laid off fifty studio employee to be able to “get again to a less complicated method of working,” as a Science (UK) Ltd. spokesperson instructed The Art Newspaper that 12 months.