Damien Hirst, the little artist lover boy of several notable hedge fund managers, has churned out yet another masterpiece of ridiculousness. This time it’s a line of psychedelic jeans for Levis, inspired by work of Andy Warhol. Unlike Hirst’s pickled tiger shark, which Steve Cohen bought for $8 million, and a diamond encrusted skull, sold to an unnamed investment group who requested anonymity because this is the sort of purchase that gets you a reputation for being insane, the pants go for the extremely reasonable price of $80,000 a pop. As we’ve mentioned in the past, a great way to ingratiate yourself with the boss is to suck up to him or her by pretending to have the same interests no matter how out there they may be (hence, my sudden interest in Dungeons and Dragons role play). So while the historically exorbitant cost of buying a dead fish and housing it in formaldehyde may have kept you, lowly SAC analyst, from getting in with the Big Guy in the past, you now have no excuse not to show up to work wearing the same outfit as the BG, and remarking on the “coincidence,” thereby taking your daily interactions from non-existent to awkward. I smell a raise.

Damien Hirst Is Really Into Jeans [Gawker]

You've obviously read the story on Bloomberg about the big art robbery in Zurich; paintings by Cezanne, Degas, Monet and Van Gogh worth more than $163 million were stolen. It's a big deal if you give a shit about obscure art museums in third-rate European cities. Reporters Marc Wolfensberger and Linda Sandler note that three burglars--packing heat and wearing ski masks--lifted Monet's ``Poppies Near Vetheuil,'' Degas' ``Count Lepic and his Daughters,'' Van Gogh's ``Blossoming Chestnut Branches'' and Cezanne's ``Boy in the Red Vest'' from the Buehrle Foundation half an hour before closing yesterday afternoon. Scandalous, we thought, and yet, not really enough information to solve the case.

Then, a lightbulb—we'd made friends with a well-placed guard at that very museum during our semester abroad junior year. We made a call, and after about ten minutes of bullshitting and acting like we were just calling to see how he was doing and not for a favor, we casually mentioned the incident. He was reluctant at first to give up any details—he said the burglar later called from a secure line (203-890-2000) and through heavy breathing that would seem to imply the person on the other end wasn't in the best of shape, told him, "If you tell anyone about this I’ll fucking kill you," but I assured him nothing he told me would end up in the public record. Here’s what he said:

"All points bulletin described the third suspect as a portly gentleman, late 40s or early 50s, dressed in black, coke-bottle glasses visible beneath ski mask. Distinguishing features: cookie crumbs cascading down the front of his zip-up sweater, haunting blue eyes. When confronted by gawking, photo-taking tourists at the gallery, the fleeing suspect promised to 'pay good money for the rights to those snapshots.' A small shark figurine was found at the scene."

.

Draw your own conclusions. We've drawn ours.

Zurich Gang Grabs $163 Million Art Haul From Museum [Bloomberg]

Geoffrey Raymond, the greatest artist of our time (excuse me, of all time), who brought us such masterpieces as "Big Lloyd I (.6 Billion)" (a rendering of Lloyd Blankfein), "Big Jim I: Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine" (Jim Cramer), and "Big Dick I (Hundred Million)" (Dick Grasso), and "Big Maria" (Maria Bartiromo), is back at it, this time with another portrait of everyone's favorite Lil' Fella, Lloyd Blankfein.

To be honest, we don't think it's Raymond's best work. It lacks a certain phallic rise, but you can judge for yourself this afternoon, when it will be on display around 85 Broad and the NYSE.

For what it's worth, big deal art collectors Sleve Dohen and Ben Biffen are said to be in a bidding war over the piece already, which is up for grabs on eBay through next Monday.

Raymond's last entry, "Big Maria" (Maria Bartiromo), sold for $5,000* even with the stains left by passersby invited to flagellate themselves to its colorful curves. Interested buyers should note that, in all probability, the genetic material collected this time around will be exclusively from Goldman Sachs employees.

*starting bid was $4,999.

“For the Love of God,” the platinum skull that Damien Hirst studded with 8,601 diamonds and called art, has been sold. An unnamed investment group—perhaps requesting anonymity because this is the kind of purchase that gets you a reputation for being insane—will pay $100 million in cash for the piece, which had been on the market since at least June 3.

Less than two weeks ago, Eli Broad, who recently seized the “opportunity” to give Goldman’s GEO fund a bunch of money, warned that major losses hitting hedge fund managers would hurt the contemporary art market, and that many expensive pieces would go unsold. A spokeswoman for Broad declined to comment on whether or not her boss is currently in the process of removing egg from his face. Is the sale indicative of market woes being over or of someone having taste in “art” so bad he/she said “credit crunch be damned, I’ve got to have this thing” (or of Eli knowing nothing)? We say a little bit of both.

On a more personal note, we’re sad to say that it’s highly unlikely that Stevie Cohen, who owns Hirst’s dead shark, was the buyer, as SAC was down as much as 9% at one point this month (which we like to call: "SAC's worst. month. ever.").

Earlier: What The Market Hath Wrought

Hirst Sells Skull for $100 Million, Manager Says [Bloomberg]

The real tragedy today isn’t that the Federal Reserve is suddenly cool with inflation, that hedge funds are being forced to churn out “Sorry about that” letters on an hourly basis, or that there’s a 39 percent chance that Countrywide Financial will be forced to hold a fire sale. It’s not even that John Devaney will soon be helicopter-less. You want to know what the real crisis that’s unfolding before our very eyes is? What’s the cause of this pandemic of fear? What you should be losing sleep over? What billionaire Eli Broad *is* losing sleep over? It’s this:

Apparently slavish devotion to following the crowd and going to whatever bar everyone else is going to (Netti’s, Marquee), drinking what everyone else is drinking (Red Bull, Bud Light from a keg), and thinking what everyone else is thinking (Kappa Sig RULES) isn’t just for first-years anymore, it’s for hedge fund managers, too. And it’s not only “art, restaurants, preschools or Caribbean hideaways” that hedgies are pretending to care about just so they can show one another up and assert their virility (you have no idea the of street cred the comes with being able to say “my daughter got into the 92 Street Y”), but stuff that actually matters, like all their funds going up and down by the same amounts.

Just this past week the New York Federal Reserve issued a warning, claiming that the risks of the suspiciously named “group think” (are we at a local Scientology meeting?) are among the biggest hedge funds are the “highest since the Long Term Capital crisis of 1998.” The huge amount of leverage available --no one knows quite how much--means that these correlated positions are even larger--and riskier--than they would appear if you merely judged them by the size of their investment capital. Of course, this could all be the Fed worrying over nothing, but, for what it’s worth, we saw Dan Loeb, Stevie Cohen and Paul Tudor Jones all wearing the same pink tube top at brunch on Sunday afternoon. Make of that what you will.

Great Hedge Fund Minds Think Too Much Alike [NYP]

While Stevie Cohen/Wynn may be content to simply own paintings suitable for sticking one’s elbow in, Rajiv Chaudhri, founder of Digital Century Capital, a technology hedge fund, demands more of his art. For him to shell out upwards of $1.6 million, it must "ooze power" from all of its orifices. Only then will he place it among “curvy stone goddesses butt[ing] up against thickly impastoed canvases,” or photograph it for posterity and to add to his “office-computer screen saver [that] flashes with images of his collection—interspersed with pictures of Payal, his photogenic wife.”

Do you want this man managing your money?

Hedge-Fund Founder Rajiv Chaudhri Loves Art That `Oozes Power' [Bloomberg]

Bloomberg’s reporting today that Steve Wynn is suing Lloyds of London for $54 million, the amount of the claim he submitted after he stuck his elbow through a Picasso that SAC Capital founder Stevie Cohen had agreed to buy for $139 million.

We don’t know. We like to think that if we put our elbow through a Picasso we’d do a lot more than wreck 1/3 of the thing. What kind of girly elbows does Wynn have, anyway?

But nonetheless we’re making a note to ourselves that if we ever find ourselves as guests at Stevie Cohen’s place, we’re keeping our gestures tight to the body and not pointing at anything at all.

Wynn Sues Lloyd's After Claiming $54 Million for Picasso Tear [Bloomberg]

Despite spending a few days outside the New York Stock Exchange and being mentioned everywhere from Gawker to the New York Times, the colorful Dick Grasso portrait by artist Geoffrey Raymond did not attract a rash of bonus-rich Wall Streeters to its Ebay auction. In all, only three people placed bids on it. The winning bid of $3,050.00 came from a bidder in Corona, California, which may mean that this portrait of a historically important Wall Street figure may end up residing on the West Coast.

Raymond isn’t giving up on Wall Street related art, however. He’s painting media figures Jim Cramer and Maria Bartiromo next. After that he plans to paint Hank Paulson. “Hank Greenberg is still in the mix, but has fallen to the back of the pack,” Raymond says.

Portrait of Richard Grasso Auction [EBay]

Stevie-boy has said that he makes 90% of his money from 5% of his investments. We hope he's trying to make money with this art stuff because the alternative--that someone would actually like to have stuff like this painting hanging around their home--is too horrible to contemplate.

From the New York Times:

As records were being broken at contemporary art auctions this week, the hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen privately scooped up a de Kooning “Woman” painting for roughly $137.5 million, adding to the prestige of a personal collection that is fast becoming one of the world’s greatest.

Landmark De Kooning Crowns Collection [New York Times]

While researching for his forthcoming book, Fortune’s Fortress: A Primer on Wealth Preservation for Hedge Fund Professionals, Russ Alan Prince polled a group of hedge funders about their spending habits, and found that, on average, each one spent roughly $4 million on art in 2005. And though they’d never really struck us right side of the brain-type folks, and we actually paused for a second or two and said “Really? Fine art? Seriously?”, we concluded that $87.9 million paintings and the like are probably pretty good status symbols and that “maybe that Prince character knows what he’s talking about.” But then—whoa there, Skippy. Run down the respondents' average spending from last year and there seems to be a subtle but obvious reason why art tops the list and not, perhaps, something else.

2005 personal average spending:

Fine art: $3.99 million
Yacht charters: $429,700
Jewelry: $376,400
Hotels & resorts: $304,900
Watches: $271,300
Fashion and accessories: $204,200
Traditional spa services: $124,000
Electronics: $99,300
Entertaining friends: $76,700
Wine & spirits for the home: $48,900

The Spending Habits of Hedgies[DealBook]

We totally saw this on the Brady Bunch once. (Yeah, we know it was a vase, but it's the same idea and you know it). The thing to do is tape it together and hope mom and dad don't notice.

The Ganz collection went up for auction in 1997, Wynn was saying -- he was standing in front of the painting at this point, facing us. He raised his hand to show us something about the painting -- and at that moment, his elbow crashed backwards right through the canvas.

There was a terrible noise.

Wynn stepped away from the painting, and there, smack in the middle of Marie-Therese Walter's plump and allegedly-erotic forearm, was a black hole the size of a silver dollar - or, to be more exactly, the size of the tip of Steve Wynn's elbow -- with two three-inch long rips coming off it in either direction. Steve Wynn has retinitis pigmentosa, an eye disease that damages peripheral vision, but he could see quite clearly what had happened.

"Oh shit," he said. "Look what I've done."

The rest of us were speechless.

"Thank God it was me," he said.

For sure.

The word "money" was mentioned by someone, or perhaps it was the word "deal."

Wynn said: "This has nothing to do with money. The money means nothing to me. It's that I had this painting in my care and I've damaged it."

My Weekend In Vegas [Huffingston Post]

Page Six details the latest crimes of hedge fundsters against art. Well, this time it wasn’t actually a hedge fundster who was responsible for the damage. It was allegedly casino operator Steve Wynn who put his hand through “Stevie Baby” Cohen’s Picasso, according to Page Six.

DID casino king Steve Wynn put his elbow through a Picasso? Sources said Wynn was hosting a cocktail party in his penthouse at the Wynn Las Vegas for the likes of Barbara Walters, Louise Grunwald, Georgette Mosbacher, David and Mary Boies, Henry and Nancy Silverman, Nora Ephron and Nick Pileggi, and Tatiana and Serge Sorokko. "It was a Picasso from the Blue Period, worth $140 million, which he had just sold to hedge-fund billionaire Steven Cohen," said one source. Wynn gallantly told his guests, "I'm glad that was me." The canvas was rushed off for repairs on a 6-inch tear. Wynn's rep said, "We don't have any information on this."

Cubist Killer [Page Six, New York Post]

Update: We can't really put up an item about Pablo Picasso without linking to the all time best thing about the artist. That's right. It's Jonathan Richman's song, "Pablo Picasso."

A few years ago we felt like a sophisticated, cultured high-roller when we flew out to Chicago for a weekend to catch a well-reviewed special exhibit at the Chicago Art institute. At least, that was the impression we were hoping to leave on the pretty young woman we flew out with us. And it kind of worked. She still smiles when Chicago comes up in conversation, and thinks of the Art Instititue as our special place.

According to a press release, we aren't the only ones who have tried this trick. Citadel founder Kenneth Griffin had his first date with his wife at the Art Institute. And so he just donated $19 million to help fund a new Modern Art wing at the the museum. It’s centerpiece will be a two story central court named the “Kenneth and Anne Griffin Court.”

“Anne and I are delighted to be able to help the Art Institute build the Modern Wing, a freestanding addition to the museum campus that we believe will be one of the world’s great museum buildings,” he said in the statement. “We visited the Art Institute on one of our first dates. For us, our relationship with this great, encyclopedic museum can be described as ‘love at first sight.’”

Suddenly springing for dinner at Charlie Trotter's doesn't seem as impressive. $19 million and your own two-story central court. How do you compete with that?

Oh, and just in case you were thinking of trying, Ken follows this up by dropping $80 milliion to buy Jasper John’s “False Start” from David Geffen. (Geffen also just sold a de Kooning to SAC Capital’s Stevie Cohen for $63.5 milliion.) Thanks man. You've ruined it for all of us.

Art Institute gets $19-million donation [Crain's]

Works by Johns and de Kooning Sell for $143.5 Million [New York Times]