Damien Hirst bashing is turning into a silly sport. First, we had Hirst as peevish scrooge because he was suing an adolescent for using an image of the diamond-encrusted skull. Now, it’s Hirst being unfair to documentary film makers for refusing permission to have his work filmed, which is with his right.

The film’s maker, Ben Lewis, feels Hirst is only trying to avoid critical judgment. But the abstract of the film provided in this clip makes us wonder about the quality of Lewis’s reasoning:

“My programme is an inquiry into the unprecedented prices of contemporary art in the last five years,” he says. “I argue that this is because of an artificially created commercial and marketing buzz around them. This has been done by placing such works of art next to some of the greatest works of art ever created by the human imagination in the British Museum and elsewhere.”

Damien Hirst Bans Documentary Filmmaker (Telegraph)