Two Damien Hirsts Stolen, But Does It Even Matter?

Two signed Damien Hirst works of art worth $50,000 have been stolen from a gallery in London, police have said. The pieces were taken from the Exhibitionist Gallery in Notting Hill, between  3a.m. on Monday.

But, does it even matter? The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones doesn’t think so.

But even if you find Hirst’s series of paintings with grids of multicoloured circles on a white background attractive, they occupy a very small place in the history of art. In the great adventure that was 20th-century abstraction, the arrival of these coolly planned and professionally executed paintings near the century’s end was a cynical epilogue that replaced the tragic visions of a Rothkowith self-mocking sitcom farce.