Damien Hirst Page 2

Tracey Emin's infamous art installation 'My Bed' is to go onsale via a Christie's auction for the purportedly bargain guide price of between £800,000 and £1.2 million. Whilst not exactly a pocket money purchase for most of the population, the price has been reportedly criticised for being too low for the British artist's seminal work.

Tracey Emin's Famous Art Installation 'My Bed' Will Be Auctioned Off By Charles Saatchi.

'My Bed; currently belongs to the noted art collector and former husband to Nigella Lawson, Charles Saatchi, who purchased the work from Emin for £150,000 after they met in a Mayfair café in 2000. Saatchi last year announced his decision to trim his collection by putting in place plans to auction 50 of his largest sculptures and installations.

Continue reading: Tracey Emin's 'My Bed' To Sell For A Snip... Sort Of

How times have changed in the art world, this year’s Turner Prize nominees have been announced for the 30th anniversary of the sometimes controversial award. Showing the all inclusiveness of art in the 21st century a YouTube artist is among the hopefuls competing for the £25,000 prize.

Who is your favourite #TurnerPrize artist of all time? http://t.co/DQ42LXx1nD pic.twitter.com/nCuxOQ5z7I

— Tate (@Tate) May 7, 2014

Continue reading: Turner Prize 2014 Shortlist: YouTube Artist Among Nominees In 'Most Accessible' List Yet

Damien Hirst's autobiography is to be ghost written by James Fox - who worked with Keith Richards on his 2010 memoir Life - and will be released by Viking Penguin next autumn. The publisher promises it will cover everything from Hirst's childhood in Leeds to his rise to become the world's most successful artist.

Damien Hirst At The Tate Modern

"They are a very cool and creative publisher with a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm. They care about all their readers from top to bottom and are not afraid of pushing the boundaries," said the artist.

Continue reading: Damien Hirst Autobiography: From Semi-Criminal, To Multi-Millionaire

Awards ceremonies are supposed to make you laugh. They’re supposed to make you cry. They’re supposed to make you angry. They’re supposed to shock the living daylights out of you. They are supposed to provide some serious ‘water cooler’ moments for you to talk about at work the next day. Did The Brits do any of these things? Did they heck. The most animated we got last night was when we managed to muster up the energy to actually yawn.

Ben Howard at the Brits 2013, possibly the blandest year ever?

Continue reading: Brit Awards 2013 - Why They Were The Blandest Brits, And Who Should Have Won...

Damien Hirst's infamous polka dot design has been applied to The Brit Award statue ahead of the announcement of 2013's shortlists. Hirst follows in the footprints of Vivienne Westwood and Sir Peter Blake in redesigning the iconic statuette.

Hirst said he is "honoured" to have been asked to contribute the design.

"It has become such an iconic award, I love the Brits," he said. "Damien is truly one of the most important British artists and his reimagining of the statue will make winning a 2013 Brit an even more special proposition," said Brits chairman David Joseph.

Continue reading: The Brit Awards Statue To Leave In A Hirst

The news that an artist kills 9,000 butterflies would likely make national news for a day or two, with animal rights being a hot topic in most Western societies, but when an artist with Damien Hirst's profile does it, it sticks.

According to Examiner, Hirst is being severely criticised for his role in killing 9,000 butterflies over a 23 -week period while his retrospective included the In and Out of Love piece. One of us at Contact Music went along, and while the butterflies made for an impressive art piece, one does question the right of one to slaughter so many. "Damien Hirst's quest to be edgy is as boring as it is callous. It does not matter whether Hirst killed the animals himself or sat by while thousands of them were massacred for his own unjustifiable amusement," a PETA representative said. "Butterflies are beautiful parts of nature and should be enjoyed in the wild instead of destroyed for something predictable and unimaginative."

The Tate Modern, which enjoyed over 400,000 visitors to see the retrospective, defended Damien Hirst and his work. They said: "The butterflies used in this work were all...selected from varieties known to thrive in the conditions created. The butterflies lived out the final stage of their natural life cycle inside this room."

Damien Hirst’s latest piece, a 20.25m (66ft) bronze artwork - known as Verity - is being installed in the Devon seaside town of Ilfracombe. But how will the town - so intent on thrusting itself into the new world - react to the public art?

Traditionally a sleepy seaside resort, with a centre-right leaning political demographic, Ilfracombe isn’t quite used to forward thinking artworks, but they’ve got a 20 year loan of Verity, the nude, naked and pregnant statue from Damien Hirst, so they better get used to it. Hirst, who lives locally and owns a restaurant in the area, has displayed his work in many locales, but is usually found at top galleries, like his recent retrospective at the Tate Modern in London. The statue’s presence in Ilfracombe as caused quite the debate, but councillor Mike Edmunds, who can see the new arrival from his bedroom window, think it’s a good thing. "We need to have a second string to our bow," he said. "We've relied, as a holiday resort, on our natural charm and beauty, but that's not enough in the present day. Hotels are closing, so we've got to do something to boost the economy and we're looking at the arts as a way of encouraging visitors."

There has, however, been local opposition; Chloe Hubbard, editor of of the North Devon Journal, says her letters page has been split over the issue. "We first reported on it eight months ago and we've had letters every single week. I haven't known any subject to have such a long-running interest. Even now Verity's arrived we are still getting protest letters, so people are clearly riled.

Vladimir Umanets,a Russian artist and co-founder of the concept of 'Yellowism' , admitted to signing the Mark Rothko mural from his Seagram collection. He does not, however, believe that he has committed an act of vandalism, nor of defacement, and instead has said that the increased knowledge and awareness of 'Yellowism' were the motivations for his bizarre behaviour.

Umanets spoke to the Guardian last night (07,Oct,2012) and said that he believed his act will, in the long run, increase the value of the Rothko painting. He said ""I believe that if someone restores the [Rothko] piece and removes my signature the value of the piece would be lower but after a few years the value will go higher because of what I did." He doesn't consider his act a crime at all, and instead compared himself to Marcel Duchamp, the originator of Dadaist and surrealist movements, and whose work has also been pivotal in the rise of conceptual art. Umanets said "I didn't destroy the picture. I did not steal anything. There was a lot of stuff like this before. Marcel Duchamp signed things that were not made by him, or even Damien Hirst."

The defaced piece of work was from Rothko's Seagram collection, which was originally a commissioned set for a hotel restaurant. Rothko repealed the commission after having completed the project, objecting the prospect of only the very wealthy diners at the hotel being able to view them, and, as ABC reports, he returned the commission money. Rothko was quoted in Rothko by Jacob Baal-Teshuva, saying that his aim in the commission was to paint 'something that will ruin the appetite of every[one] who ever eats in that room. If the restaurant would refuse to put up my murals that would be the ultimate compliment. But they wont. People can stand anything these days'.

Continue reading: Homeless Russian Artist Defaces Rothko Mural In The Name Of "Yellowism"