There is an old joke that the clue to contemporary art is in the name: it is a con, and it is temporary. Even those inured to the industry’s excesses, however, might have been surprised by a report at the weekend about Damien Hirst. Not apparently content with his £215 million fortune, the original Young British Artist has allegedly taken to “bullying” auction houses into refusing to sell prints individually, insisting that they should be sold only as a complete package.

The work in question was In a Spin, the Action of the World on Things, a 4ft by 3ft box covered in one of Hirst’s iconic spin paintings, which are created by a machine pouring paint on to a canvas. Inside each box (Hirst made 68 of them) are 23 signed prints of spin images.

John Brandler, an art dealer in Essex, tried last month to sell two of the box-top paintings, valued around £75,000, via Phillips de Pury, the auctioneers. They refused, despite handling two similar sales recently, saying that Hirst was now opposed to anyone attempting to sell In a Spin without the accompanying prints. Given that many of these prints are already owned individually, bought for between £2,000 and £4,000, there are fears that people might have unwittingly bought an unrealisable investment.

Nonsense, said a spokeswoman for Hirst, blaming a “miscommunication internally” at the auctioneers. Hirst was interested only in ensuring that buyers knew the prints were part of one artwork and correctly attributed. He was not interested in preventing people selling what they wanted.

A more cynical soul might beg to differ. For Hirst, 46, has never shied away from squeezing every last drop of cash out of his work: on one occasion he forced a 16-year-old student who’d used an image of his diamond-studded skull for an internet collage to hand over £200.