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From C-Monster:
The graffiti artist who stole a buncha pencils from a Hirst installation at the Tate Modern is now threatening to sharpen them.
In response to my reposting C-Monster, an artist emailed me:
That’s cute, Regina, but you’re missing the point. One artist vandalized the work of another. The pencils aren’t just pencils, any more than Claes Oldenburg’s bat is just a bat. In a more rational world than the one shaping up online, art critics would support the artist, not the vandal.
I think it’s worth remembering that Damien Hirst started this fight when he took teenage street artist Cartrain to court for copyright infringement, and, in an astonishing miscarriage of justice, won.
Copyright? Cartrain’s collages are satires.
An example of what Cartrain was forced to hand over to Hirst’s lawyers, posted by Jonathan Jones:
I love Hirst’s work, but he’s in danger of becoming the Dick Cheney of the art world.
As Jones wrote:
Damien Hirst‘s feud with teenage street artist Cartrain could yet become the most controversial story of Hirst’s career.
It really is vile for a rich man to use his power to bully someone who,
after all, is just trying to emulate him by making art with found
materials.Presumably, what irks Hirst is that Cartrain used
Hirst’s diamond skull in a series of collaged portraits of the skull’s
creator. Hirst successfully demanded that all the young artist’s works
incorporating the diamond skull should be handed over, presumably to be destroyed. (more)
(That’s two presumablys in one paragraph. Doesn’t the Guardian employ editors?) Of course Cartrain should give Hirst back his dick pencils. But Hirst needs to stop being such a dick. One Cheney is more than enough.
Hirst should be ashamed. Bad form. Good satire from the kid, though. If it weren’t any good, Hirst might have left him alone.
but what if the vandalism is more interesting than the original work of art itself? doesn’t that count as a work of art too? in which case, hirst, by demanding the pencils be returned, is attempting to vandalize the vandalism of his work – a despicable, despicable act.
btw, so excited that my scribblings merit listing as sentence of the day!!!
xox,
c.
agreed.
Cartrain’s collage looked amazing in the Guardian because it was cut at the neck. When I saw the whole thing, it’s way too much. Kinda dumb the way he fit everything in.
Yr sentences are all worth reposting, Ms. C.
Hirst’s presumption is that he’s entitled to have it all. With meticulous craft and at astronomical expense, a human skull is encrusted with diamonds. This objet d’art, commissioned by Hirst, transforms the memento mori and invites us to see ourselves as creatures doomed to die, obsessed with money, and entranced by trinkets. It is intended to become his icon, his brand, his logo, like Warhol’s can of soup. But more than just a way to enhance his artistic reputation–such as it is–the diamond-studded skull is primarily an instrument by which to increase Hirst’s already considerable personal wealth. And so,pouts the art star, how dare this upstart oik, this Cartrain person, appropriate the image of such a fabulously expensive, unique object–MY object!– for his own purposes? He dares, sir, he dares! He does it because the image itself has already been commodified, reproduced endlessly in the media and on the net, and it has, for better or worse, entered the culture. Accordingly, Cartrain and for that matter anyone should be entitled to use it to make whatever statements they want, and Damien Hirst should have nothing to say about it. Does the estate of Walker Evans sue Sherrie Levine? Does the estate of Pablo Picasso sue every cartoonist who sends up Guernica? The court decision is breathtakingly stupid. Let street vendors in Shanghai hawk blatantly cheap copies of the diamond skull to anyone with a few yuan to spare. Let children make Christmas tree ornaments out of it. Let the ironies proliferate and beget more ironies, world without end, amen!
🙂
Well put, Sanford Robinson. Personally, I don’t want to underestimate Hirst’s achievement. Hirst is the mountain, and Cartrain is the mountain climber.
I’m in complete agreement with you on this Regina. Part of the responsibility of being a contemporary Artist is to help those in need of support. Hirst has done himself great harm in this instance and he will certainly not overcome this example of his misanthropy. He is not the first malevolent force to find it’s way into the Arts.
Is Hirst’s Skull his self-portrait?
Surely yes, among many other things. It’s a dazzling portrait of him, Capitalism and the culture that Capitalism creates.
To Monica: I don’t agree that it’s “dumb” the way Cartrain “fit everything in” in his collage. The dollar bill is good, representing Hirst as a money machine, and the label comes from Peter Pan. Hirst won’t grow up. Cartrain is an artist worth watching. If he goes to jail, I’m going to organize a Hirst boycott.
Well, Hirst is Hirst, but whatever his achievement, and whatever point in the trajectory of his career he happens to occupy now, the case of Hirst v. Cartrain raises questions perhaps more significant than whether the rich, established artist was mean to the struggling younger one. One issue that seems to merit serious discussion has to do with the very nature of ownership: namely, at what level of assimilation into the culture can an image or idea no longer be considered the exclusive property of the person who came up with it? It could be fairly argued that the most successful work of art is, by definition, one that’s so widely recognized as to be common coin. Salvador Dali’s melting watches, for example. How many times since he painted The Persistence of Memory have painters, commercial illustrators, and photographers quoted this iconic image? Everyone literate in western culture will recognize that it’s from a famous 20th century painting, and many will associate it with the equally famous mustachioed face of the artist, who avidly courted publicity and supported a lavish lifestyle with the proceeds from sales of his work. Far from diminishing Dali’s stature each time yet another art director invoked the image of the melting watches to sell scotch, soap, or securities, what in fact was happening was an elevation of his work to the condition of Whistler’s Arrangement in Black and Grey (“Whistler’s Mother”) or Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase–an image everybody knows, famous for being famous.
Once this process is set in motion, it amounts to saying before the world “Baby, you’ve arrived!” Only in this case Hirst misread the signal to mean that an upstart was ripping him off. In fact Cartrain’s appropriation of the image of the diamond-studded skull (an important distinction: not the priceless object itself, but merely the IMAGE of the skull!), however ironically intended, was arguably an act of homage, however unconscious, to Hirst for having scaled the heights of the art world and planted his skull there. For now, perhaps, the achievement seems genuine enough, but nobody knows whether future historians will take as seriously as we do Hirst’s ambition to define our era as the Age of Bling, (The same thing goes for Jeff Koons’s lessons in the redemptive power of kitsch). Again, what the case of Hirst v. Cartrain points out most clearly is the need for a reevaluation of fundamental ideas about cultural content and ownership. I submit that those issues deserve prolonged and serious consideration not just by legal scholars, philosophers, and social theorists, but by everyone who finds value and meaning in the arts.
I do not think Damien Hirst is an artist, his work is not art at all. He sells, he is in medias, but that is not a sign of the quality of artwork at all. His pencils may be destroyed and nothing will be lost. Wake up, the emperor is naked…