If you want to see how artists copy from one another then you only have to go into any gallery or museum. The Velázquez show at the National Gallery provides a good example. There is The Rokeby Venus in all her glory, the nude that Manet, two hundred years later, was to make his own when he painted his Olympia. He saw it as a homage to the 17th century master.

“Good artists copy. Great artists steal,” declared Picasso, who begged, borrowed and pinched from all over the place. And yet he is seen as an icon of Modernism, of that movement which appears to have prized originality almost above anything else.

This is not the first time that Damien Hirst has been accused of lifting his ideas. His massively scaled-up copy of an anatomical model attracted similar complaints.

But Hirst’s talent lies less in innovative design than in repackaging. And he is brilliant at that. His formaldehyde animals are like three-dimensional versions of Francis Bacon’s paintings. His semi-dissected version of Degas’s Little Dancer was a focal point of the Royal Academy’s summer show. He took a seminal sculpture and rebranded it with the Brit Art stamp.

Such re-presentation lies at the heart of the Post-Modern aesthetic. So is it really relevant whether, knowingly or unknowingly, Hirst has imitated some designer’s daisy patterns? The only thing of interest is that yet again he is causing controversy. And for an artist whose work speaks to our contemporary taste for a good scandal, controversy may be the most important thing that he creates.

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