Of Art or Money?

Pharmacy" by Damien Hirst is a large recreation of what a chemist's shop might look like. The entire work is priced to cost about 10 million pounds. Earlier this year a teenager named Cartrain, who had already had issues with Hirst over copyright infringement, stole a set of pencils out of the "Pharmacy" that cost 500,000 pounds. He was arrested and forced to return the pencils.

It is my opinion that while the piece of work itself is fascinating, the amount spent on it is a little ridiculous. It's almost to be expected that someone might take something from a work that big. There are already cabinet doors and drawers in the piece, so if Hirst wanted to put something like that on display I feel it's only natural to put locks on the doors so things can't be stolen. From looking at the some of the other works by this man he seems to have a large ego about his work and spends quite a bit on everything he does. I suppose that is his decision, and it's necessary in some things. It was not, i believe in this instance. Yes, the pencils used were rare and dated to probably about where he wanted to the chemistry lab to be from, but they alone made up 5% of the cost of the entire work. It could be said that's part of what makes the piece great, but upon looking at it, unless you did research on them before you'd never know or be able to appreciate the cost or meaning.