Frank Dunphy’s art-market instincts have served Damien Hirst well in the past. The artist says he owes much of his global-brand status and $1 billion personal fortune to Mr. Dunphy. As far as Mr. Dunphy is concerned, the prices for Mr. Hirst’s art have never been high enough.
Mr. Hirst, known for his devil-may-care persona, rose to fame in the early 1990s by using dissected or pickled animal carcasses to explore themes like death and decay. Last year, the average auction estimate for a Hirst piece was about $470,000, up from $63,000 a decade ago. In June 2007, the royal family of Qatar paid Sotheby’s a record $19 million for “Lullaby Spring,” a mirrored cabinet lined with shelves of multicolored pills.
“People have a habit of underestimating Frank,” Mr Marlow says, “but you can’t outmaneuver him. He believes in Damien Hirst more than he believes in God.”
Tall and white-haired, Mr. Dunphy has a father-confessor demeanor that some attribute to his years of Catholic schooling in Dublin. He spent years as an accountant, filing tax returns for British performers such as Coco the Clown and strippers like Peaches Page before meeting a shaggy-haired Mr. Hirst over a snooker table at London’s Groucho Club in 1995. The artist had just won the prestigious Turner Prize and his hard-partying ways had made him a tabloid favorite.
Mr. Dunphy says he immediately recognized a star barely tapping his financial potential. He offered the artist his services, and the pair soon settled into a comfortable partnership, with Mr. Dunphy playing the bow-tied super-ego to Mr. Hirst’s id.
Friends say the artist loves to play pranks on his manager. During a trip to New York several years ago, he crept in to Mr. Dunphy’s hotel room while he was sleeping and decorated the entire room with cutout images of devils and demons “so that Frank would wake up in hell,” says Richard Wadhams, Mr. Dunphy’s former business partner.