What the what?

Thanks for the feedback folks. Keep it coming.
A couple of you gently pointed out that while you found my last post interesting you:
1. Were confused by the Warhol and Basquiat image;
2. Didn't know who the f*&^ I was talking about;
3. Felt that perhaps my assessment of Hirst was a bit harsh (re: not evolving "art") and was laden with judgment.  

Sorry about that. Lemmesplan...
1. The picture of Basquiat and Warhol is from a promotional poster for a collaboration between the two artists. In the early 1980s, Warhol and Basquiat began a series of collaborative paintings together.

 I thought this was a great image because I think the two of them pretty much embody the New York art scene in the 80s. The celebrity. The excess. The fabulous-ness of it.

2. Who the who? (Thank you wiki)
Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist. He came to prominence as part of a group known as the Young British Artists in the early 1990s.  He is internationally renowned and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist. During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the relationship ended. He is most famous for a series of artworks in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) are preserved—sometimes having been dissected—in formaldehyde.

Charles Saatchi is co-founder of Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the world’s most well known global advertising firms. He is a well known art collector and patron and the founder of the Saatchi gallery (which he opened in 1985 to show off his contemporary art collection).  Saatchi is pretty much as close as you can get to a modern day Medici. 

Robert Hughes is an Australian-born art critic, writer and television documentary maker who has resided in New York since 1970 where he moved when he obtained the position of art critic for Time magazine. Hughes is notorious for his criticisms of artist/filmmaker Julian Schnabel, whom he has described as being "to painting what Sly Stallone is to acting - a lurching display of oily pectorals - except that Schnabel makes bigger public claims for himself." He also called Warhol, "One of the most boring people I ever met."
[ed: I would follow Hughes pretty to the ends of the earth]

Gagosian Gallery is a contemporary art owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. There are currently 11 art spaces under this gallery.  In the early 1980s Gagosian developed his business rapidly by exploiting the possibilities of reselling works of art by blue-chip modern and contemporary artists. After establishing a New York gallery in the mid-1980s Gagosian began to work with a stable of super collectors including David Geffen, Charles Saatchi and Samuel Newhouse Jr. Bidding on behalf of Newhouse in 1988, Gagosian paid over $17 million dollars for "False Start" by Jasper Johns a then-record price for a work by a living artist. That record was beaten in 2008, when Gagosian paid $23.5 million dollars at Sotheby's in November 2007 for Jeff Koon’s "Hanging Heart" (an artist who happens to belong to the Gagosian gallery's stable). There is a bunch of sketchy stuff about tax evasion, back room deals and questionable ethics but I don't want to get sued so we'll just leave that part out.

3. Am I judging
yes. I am.  you don't have to agree. I welcome the argument. You should start a blog and we can link to each other. that would be fun.

I have some exciting stuff to show you but it will have to wait until next week...