Damien Hirst Separates Himself From The Artists Community

In class we discussed Appropriating Art and how it is community spirited meaning that the artists don’t mind other artists taking their art and portray it using a new medium or differently. However, Damien Hirst does not have this mindset, threatening to sue a 16-year-old who takes time off his school work to create urban designs of cultural icons, which he sells for £65. Damien Hirst is suing Cartain because he incorporating his diamond encrusted skull, For the Love of God, into his graffiti prints. Not only is Hirst suing him but he is also demanding the teenager to give him the £200 he made from selling these images. This is ridiculous of Hirst when he made £200 million from his diamond-encrusted skull and pickled shark.

Some of Cartain’s work is displayed on the backstreets of London’s Brick Lane and Old Street. He has done other collages incorporating the Queen and George Bush as well. Some of the collages he did with the encrusted skull imposed the skull over faces or figures from other photographs. One displayed the skull next to a bag of carrots in a grocery cart. According to The Independent, what Cartain did was that ‘he made a series of collages using photographs of Hirst’s skull, some of which imposed the bejeweled sculpture over the faces of figures taken from other photographs. One showed the skull in a shopping basket alongside some carrots. The images were displayed in the online gallery, 100artworks.com, where Cartain’s collages sell for £65, on average’. This is seen as ironic because, ‘three weeks after the artist unveiled the £50m sculpture, another artist, John LeKay, claimed he had been producing similar jewel-encrusted skulls since 1993’.

In revenge for Hirst forcing him to stop selling his collages, Cartain sent threats to his gallery and faced a possible jail sentence because he took a ‘box of pencils from a Hirst installation as a prank and offered to return them only if Hirst would let him go back to displaying and selling his art’. The Faber Castell Mongol 482s from 1990, box of pencils is supposedly worth GBP 500,000, making this one of the largest modern art thefts in British history. Some argue that the stunt was to gain publicity, which I feel was part of his revenge. Overall, if Hirst did not make such a big deal over Cartain’s art, this big ordeal would not have happened and I feel that this portrayed Hirst negatively to the rest of the art community.