Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Modern "art"

A few weeks ago there was a thread about modern art which made me feel I was an over cynical old man. I read the following in a paper today.
This reveals something I think. Vindicated perhaps?

IN THIS ISSUE
News from the art world
Hirst’s Government handouts
By some estimates, Damien Hirst is “the world’s richest artist”, said Richard Eden in the Daily Mail. He has an estimated fortune of around £300m, owns a 14-bedroom house in Regent’s Park, and has been known to give seats on private jets to his pet bulldog. “None of that, however, deterred him from turning to the hard-pressed taxpayer during the pandemic.” According to the accounts for his company, Science (UK), it claimed £1.31m in furlough payments from the Covid job-retention scheme in 2020 – a year in which it turned over a total of £18.2m. The business also received a £15m business-interruption loan from the Government. Nevertheless, said Anny Shaw in The Art Newspaper, Hirst laid off 63 studio employees in October 2020, after a planned retrospective of his work in China was cancelled. The cancellation forced him “to remodel his business, pausing the production of new works and concentrating on the sale of existing pieces”. He fired a third of his workforce, mostly based in Dudbridge, Gloucestershire.
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Strictly speaking, made redundant, after due process, rather than fired.
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/202...ng-pound15m-in-government-covid-19-loans

Art at this level is a business, not a craft community. In the way his business is run he's not doing anything illegal. And did top up the government's 80% furlough payments to 100%

But is he someone you'd want to work for?

"As one former employee who worked for Hirst for three years before being made redundant in October 2020 wrote on the recruitment website indeed.com: “During my three years there were multiple rounds of redundancies to remove staff. These positions were largely re-staffed within a matter of months. The business is effectively run by lawyers, and staff are treated as disposable. If job security, dignity and being appreciated at work are important to you, Science may not be a good fit.”"

Is it an ethical approach to hire & fire as the business expands & contracts?
Maybe he should be offering short term contracts to deliver specific pieces of work.

All in all it leaves a sour taste, doesn't it?


Will

Perhaps someone should cut him in half and put him in a glass display case!!

Reminds me of the old adage "Abstract art? A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered"

Like Modern Jazz and hyper expensive wines, there is a lot of Bollox surrounding these subjects also

Bang on the money Bob These boys had is sussed too...

Great advice as always by Monty Python.

The unacceptable face of naked capitalism.

Nope, don't want that stuff nationalised and owned by the taxpayer, thank you!
Also you probably don't want companies like this just using contractors - making someone a FTE for a while is likely better. And certainly happens elsewhere with seasonal or variable staffing needs...