Golden calves have always been expensive. In the Bible the Israelites paid a heavy price for worshiping one while Moses was off getting the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai. More recently a wealthy buyer paid £10.3 million—about $18.6 million at the time—for a latter-day version immersed in formaldehyde and graced with a golden crown of sorts (it might be a halo) and 18-karat horns and hooves. The sale was part of a larger auction of works by artist and provocateur Damien Hirst, and although the gavel fell during the depths of the U.S. financial crisis, the two-day auction grossed $200.7 million. If only mortgage securities had been in such demand.

Given the context, it’s impossible to see Hirst’s mocking ungulate as anything less than a requiem for the Wall Street that is no longer with us. Far from a financial Pamplona enlivened by a stampede of bulls, the Street became the epicenter of a financial panic that obliterated the independent securities firms which were once the heart of it; one failed and the others were either subsumed by or turned themselves into more conventional banking companies. In a sense, they were blown up for worshiping the false god of financial engineering, so that the bull once celebrated as a symbol of growth and vitality now stands embalmed by someone whose talent for abstraction is no less refined than Wall Street’s—and who may now be more solvent.

Rest assured, the bull will break out of the formaldehyde someday and romp anew. But meanwhile, requiescat in pace.

Damien Hirst’s “The Golden Calf,” 2008, an actual calf decorated in 18-karat gold and preserved in a formaldehyde solution, was sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $18.6 million.

Daniel Akst is a writer living in New York. He previously wrote for THE AMERICAN about Eero Saarinen's business architecture. 

Image by Rune Hellestad/Corbis.