This is exactly the kind of thing we're hoping the recession will wipe out: the class of artists like who sell use their personal juices in the art—and sell it for a lot of money! It isn't punk. It isn't Dada. Freud would have a helluva lot to analyze—unless you're just hard-core mercenaries. But! These artists can't do it alone—they need enabling dealer/gallerists like Javier Peres, who's profiled in the New York Observer today. Blame him for Dash Snow's semen/New York Post collage, Terence Koh's Art Basel installation of his own alleged gold-covered poo ($500,000), and a guy who made "super-realist bird droppings." But we're hoping he'll collapse under his own excess:

“Saturday [he] was unveiling a new gallery in Culver City... "My friends and I recently decided we’re going to drink as much as we can and spend as much money as we can, and hopefully it will catch on,” he said over the phone. “That’s kind of how I’m seeing it. I’m going to do bigger and better shows. We have slowed down a bit,” he added. “But my slow is fast.”

Even "sold a sculpture last year for $14.5 million" Damien Hirst is all like, yeah, "What goes up must come down" to ArtInfo right now. "Gotcha," indeed.