I've been skirting all things Damien Hirst as long as I possibly could, in favor of talented, budding artists who may never see Sotheby's or find the resources to fashion a ginormous diamond skull. And then once the news piled up, I toyed with the idea of visiting a particular exhibit to snap a suitable picture to match the headline, but that seemed like too much work. Instead, here's a perfunctory rundown of what's been happening in the iconic artist's life lately. Most items orbit his paradigm-shifting antics that threaten to render the middlemen -- galleries, dealers, agents -- redundant.

In his unprecedented move to make over 200 pieces of his art available to the general public via auction, Hirst successfully skipped over his dealers and ultimately grossed over $200 million total. More newsworthy was the notable absence of longtime Hirst dealer Larry Gagosian, who, having been rendered nigh useless by Hirst's direct-to-public transaction, opted to swing by Daria Zhukova's opening of Garage instead. And in the wake of Hirst's multimillion-dollar Sotheby's-assisted spoils comes a celebratory retrospective of some really deep thoughts from the artist himself, compiled from throughout the years.

But lest we (or at least those among us rallying for Hirst and Hirst himself) get too far ahead of ourselves, New York Times art and design writer Roberta Smith prepared a caveat for this particular art-world business model: "The auction's success doesn't even say a lot about the non-Hirst part of the art market." And while another Gagosian artist -- Takashi Murakami -- has been tipped as wanting to shift paradigms á la Hirst, emerging artists will be the ones to practically test the ability to cut out dealers and galleries in order to make green from their artwork.