But miracles—that chip shot from the trees that somehowfinds the cup—are just what make golf such an enjoyable spectatorsport. And much the same could be said of art marketing, inwhich pigment, purpose and price point can all somehow cometogether in a record sale. So the Coley sculpture’s slogan is notwhat you might have expected to greet the guests—among them Sarah Douglas, Art+Auction’s peripatetic staff writer—at thehot-ticket event Sotheby’s hosted in late August at a tonyBridgehampton country club. The party’s purpose: to previewworks by Damien Hirst that would be auctioned off a few weekslater in London amid much fanfare and scrutiny.

Douglas chronicled the event on the Appraisal, herrecently launched blog on ARTINFO.com, where she made thetrenchant comment that Coley’s message was “rather inauspicious,given the occasion. Hirst and Sotheby’s, after all, [were]betting on a miraculous £65 million from this sale” of butterfliesand polka dots and dead critters in tanks of formaldehyde.

As I write this column, in early September, I don’t knowthe outcome of this unprecedented auction. Was there indeeda miracle on New Bond Street, or did Hirst slice his drive irretrievablyinto the rough? Regardless, I can be certain of onething: Art world insiders and observers with a philosophizingstreak will long be debating what the artist’s audacious attemptto rewrite the rules—bypassing the middleman, the PowerfulGallerist, and bringing works directly from the studio to theauction block—means and how, if at all, it will alter the mathematicsof making, buying and selling contemporary art.

Rules, the saying goes, are meant to be broken, and noone recently has exemplified this principle better than Lisa Dennison, who graces our cover. She surprised just about everyonelast year when she defected from the GuggenheimMuseum—where she’d spent her entire career, rising throughthe ranks to become director—to Sotheby’s. (In her capacity aschairman of North and South America, Dennison presided overthe Hirst event, exhibiting her usual gracious and upbeat mannerand, as Douglas blogged, looking “resplendent in Pucci.”) Nowshe’s tackling a new challenge: curating an Ed Ruscha–inspiredshow that opens this month at the Flag Art Foundation inNew York’s Chelsea neighborhood and features works by suchartists as George Condo, Thomas Demand and Terry Winters.Beginning on page 168, Douglas, again, writes about the pleasureDennison takes in this latest phase of her working life.

It’s enthusiasts like Dennison who fuel the art world’sengine: the dealers who stand staunchly by their artists evenwhen they’re not evening-sale stars; the auction-house specialistswho toil in unfashionable fields out of the spotlight; thecollectors who follow their hearts regardless of what currenttaste dictates. One such maverick is Guillaume Houzé, a youngParis-based collector and philanthropist whom Amy Serafinprofiles starting on page 178. Although still in his 20s, Houzé,an heir to the Galeries Lafayette department store fortune, isdetermined to take on what he calls “the defeatism of the Frenchart scene” by championing local talent. It’s been at least a centurysince contemporary French art dominated the internationalmarket, so Houzé’s task is huge but hardly onerous, given hispassion. “Art is a necessity for me,” he tells Serafin, no doubtarticulating a sentiment felt by most of the folks featured in thismagazine every month. “It is inseparable from who I am.”

"Letter from the Editor" originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's October 2008 Table of Contents .