What's aught but as 'tis valued? Or, as Andy Warhol put it, "art is what you can get away with". Damien Hirst, Warhol's post-pop descendant, understands better than anyone how art and money have always needed each other. "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever", his exhibition of 223 fresh pieces to be sold at Sotheby's next week, announces a radical though insidious change in that relationship in the 21st century. A slap in the face for dealers - this is the first time an auction house has sold new work - Mr Hirst's installation-performance is a landmark not just because it shows art being sold in a new way; it also shows it being made, and seen and understood, in a new way.

One coup is the production-line size: sharks, tanks, butterflies, shelving, fag ends, diamonds have all been sourced on an industrial scale by Mr Hirst's workshops, to supply finished articles straight to clients. Artists have had assistants and workshops before, of course - Rubens' studios in Antwerp made him one of the richest men in 17th century Europe. Mr Hirst's form of disintermediation, though, is contemporary, echoing the direct way bands sell music, or companies sell stocks, online rather than through record companies or brokers.