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i don't keep up with the art world that closely but as far i understand the damien hirst type collector/investor market has kind of bottomed out, it became clear that there were a handful of collectors and dealers doing a lot of price fixing, & auction rigging to boost the value of their investments/assests/whatever, plus dealers were giving out the impression that works by their top artists were far more scarce than they actually were as a means to drive up prices, e.g. people looking to buy Damien Hirst paintings from The White Cube gallery in London had to join a waiting list even though the gallery had a stock of his paintings already finished with more finished work than there were people waiting to buy them.
From what I can see the whole "mainstream" of modern art was driven to cater to the tastes of this handful of rich collectors, and there isn't really much in terms of distribution systems or galleries for artists who don't match the focus of the sort of "mainstream" gallery system, unless you want to make either corny paintings of seaside cottages or shirehorses to sell in high street, or super conservative stuff old fashioned stuff to sell to people who live in Mayfair.
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