During the Winter I read some of 2666: A Novel by Roberto Bolano. In the book an English artist cuts off his right hand and nails it to a self-portrait. The painting becomes his “last self-portrait”, or at least the last one painted with his right hand, and increases the value of all of his other paintings…

‘Suicide’ sculpture of Damien Hirst causes controversy in Spain | Art and design | guardian.co.uk
It is Damien Hirst with a bloody hole in his head – the richest bad boy of British art finally turned into a piece of half-pickled art himself. Spanish artist Eugenio Merino’s sculpture, which shows a Hirst figure pointing a gun at himself and blowing his own brains out, is meant to be a comment on the British artist’s own £50mdiamond-studded skull, For the Love of God. Merino has called his piece “4 the Love of Go(l)d”, suggesting that Hirst’s attempts to increase the value of his own work would only be enhanced by his own death.

“I thought that, given that he thinks so much about money, his next work could be that he shot himself. Like that the value of his work would increase dramatically,” Merino told The Guardian. “Obviously, though, he would not be around to enjoy it.”

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