Here’s a dirty little secret of the art world: a lot of the “big name” artists don’t even make their own work. Damien Hirst’s endless spot paintings weren’t painstakingly done by the man himself in some fever of creative genius. They were churned out by his minions. His diamond skull? Fabricated by specialists. His reputation? Built on branding and hype.

And Hirst isn’t alone. Jeff Koons doesn’t sit there polishing balloon dogs in his spare time. He’s got teams of fabricators doing the heavy lifting while he poses as a visionary. It’s the same story again and again — the bigger the name, the less paint actually touches their hands.

If a nobody from Liverpool (who could I mean) admitted they outsourced their art, they’d be laughed out of the gallery. “That’s not real art,” people would say. But when a millionaire does it, suddenly it’s “conceptual genius” or “radical authorship.” It’s not radical, it’s just lazy and cynical.

Of course you can go back to Andy Warhol and The Factory production line churning out prints of Marilyn Monroe and argue that this has been happening way before Hirst and Koons. The difference is, Warhol did it to make his prints affordable and didn’t try to hide it. Hirst on the other hand is doing quite the opposite.

The sad truth is that the art world doesn’t care about craft anymore. It cares about brands because that’s what makes money. Damien Hirst isn’t an artist in the traditional sense, he’s a logo. Galleries sell the logo. Have a look around the shop at the Tate Modern and you'll see shelves full of 'brands'. Collectors buy the logo because it has value. Critics write glowing essays to justify the logo (although more and more art critics seem to be seeing Hirst for what he really is). The actual work? Irrelevant. It could’ve been painted by a bored art student on minimum wage (and often was).

So the next time you see a Damien Hirst on a gallery wall, ask yourself: what are you really looking at? Art? Or just the glossy output of a factory with a celebrity signature slapped on the corner?