Because that’s the thing with this series, which Hirst calls “The Veil Paintings”: they were actually made by Damien Hirst. This is the man who famously cranked out a few dozen of his celebrated spot paintings himself… and then let a team of studio assistants make the other 1,375 or so currently in existence.

Now, as video evidence shows and as his studio confirms, he has inserted himself back into the studio, and done all 24 of the paintings himself. It’s not the first time Hirst has painted an entire series himself, but it’s perhaps the first time he’s fully succeeded in front of the easel—when his last painting show opened, in 2012, the Guardian critic Jonathan Jones savaged his show at White Cube in London, saying , “Hirst is not a painter at all in any meaningful artistic way (no, not even ironically).”

At Gagosian, he seems to have more of a hit. By the time the lingering crowd finally left the gallery nearly an hour after the official closing time, all but three of the 24 works on view had been sold in just a matter of days, at a price point that ranged from $400,000 for smaller works also included in the show, to $1.6 million for the towering ones, said multiple art advisors who had access to prices and availability. And by the time of the dinner afterward at Mr. Chow, the gallery confirmed, all had sold.

But where was Damien?