Skin in the game

There aren’t many major companies that don’t call on an artist from time to time to give their brands an upward spin. Nike has just called on Martino Gamper, a regular exhibitor in NZ with Francis Upritchard, and he's answered the call. Gamper used one of Nike's new high-tech knit materials to fit out some drum kits with Nike skins. Who knows what they sound like?(well Nike probably do) but they look sharp and Gamper has added his own touches to the drum sides. You can see more here.

Other art brand combos from OTN
Jeff Koons and Dom Pérignon
Ralph Hotere and Westpac
Damien Hirst and Alexander McQueen
Gilbert and George and Comme des Garçons
Cindy Sherman and MAC
Salvador Dali and Chupa Chups
Jenny Holtzer and Keds

Cover story

Another Virgin in a condom controversy? Well sort of. Super art collector Aby Rosen has installed Virgin Mother by Damien Hirst in his front yard. Trouble is the bronze Mother is nine meters high and pokes up above the shrubbery. The neighbours found the half flayed nude a bit hard to take and asked Aby at the very least to turn the skinned side away from them and facing him. Being super rich Rosen doesn't warm to criticism but in the meantime he has put a sheath over the work giving us a unexpected segue back to the media storm at Te Papa’s opening exhibition.

Image: The VM channeling the VIAC

Art stars

In the era before Jeff Koons, Marina Abramovic, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, celebrity artists were just that; celebrities who also made art. Back then such artists tended to find themselves tucked into the Samuel Johnson category “like a dog walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all”.

Of course some of them had done time at art school and (like actors who can also sing) were perfectly capable of turning out something convincing. So here’s a little match-the-celebs-to-their-artwork competition to keep you busy for a couple of minutes. The artist-celebs are:
Marilyn Manson
Sly Stallone
Bob Dylan
Tony Bennett
Anthony Quinn
Peter Falk
David Bowie.

You can find names and works matched here on OTN Stuff.

Spot the difference

Japanese TV channels Kusama and/or Hirst

Spot on

Now you can have Damien by your side every waking hour. The new free iPhone app Dots lets you muck around with Hirst-like colour combos and, you guessed it, join the dots. The Hirst lookalike has been a hit on the app store with a million copies downloaded in its first week out in the world. The game itself is Tetris meets um…join the dots. Any dots joined at right angles vanish and your score goes up.

Big art from small goods

From the bacon obsessed internet some other deli products to buy up for your next Gagosian themed party here on the omg blog.
Images: Sausage poodle and Mother and child, with no apologies to Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst that we could find anyway. (Thanks M)

Googling on: paint by numbers

In its exhibition WHIZZ BANG POP the Auckland Art Gallery is showing the Damien Hirst multiple Paint by Numbers (edition of 175). Lowering its market value at a stroke, they have taken the title literally and made themselves a ‘Hirst’ by following the paint-by-number instructions (it’s a bit like eating one of Paul McCarthy’s Chocolate Santas). More typically this work would be displayed as it is sold with the canvas untouched revealing its paint-by-number markings for the 90 spots. NOTE: The Auckland Art Gallery has since told us that when the work was purchased the edition had already been opened and the 'Hirst' painted presumably by its first owner. Word is that, perhaps inspired by this professional do-it-yourself spirit, a recent visitor prised open the paint box on display, took out one of the brushes, dipped it into one of the 90 pots of paint and had a go. Presumably their efforts to follow Hirst’s instructions will be conserved out.

Of course Hirst isn’t the first PBN artist. Warhol made a few back in 1962 as Do it yourself paintings (shop here) although now the worm has turned again and you can buy a PBN version of Warhol Campbell’s Soup can. The original Paint by numbers concept goes back to 1950 when the Palmer Paint Company in Detroit came up with the idea. Overall this kind of PBN has had bad press in the art world. It is seen as the painting equivalent of Truman Capote’s great sniff at Jack Kerouac's work, “That’s not writing, it’s typing.” Still, if you can muster up some irony you can buy sets here.

Art in Adland

Lotto's latest TV advert reaches out to Damien Hirst's diamond encrusted skull to sell a must-have moment to their punters.

Hirst’s castle

“Could you just stand on one leg up there on the plinth?” How many artists get to hear this sort of request from photographers? Many resist but some just can’t. Following super-mugger Jeff Koons, here is the leading British entry Damien Hirst featuring five of his favourite themes, arm-work, face mugging, hand-work, wide-open and head-to-head. 

As a Friday extra some Hirst related quotes.
“There’s no reasonable ‘why’ to it—just a big ‘why not?’
US art critic Peter Schjeldahl 

“Damien Hirst is a brand, because the art form of the 21st century is marketing.” 
Germaine Greer 

“People are very funny, because they like buying things when they’re expensive. They don’t like buying things when they’re inexpensive. All of a sudden, they can buy the art for the same price as it was 15 years ago, but now they don’t want to do it.” 
Art collector Alberto Mugrabi on Damien Hirst’s work at auction 

“When the penny drops that these are not art, it's all going to collapse. Hirst should not be in the Tate. He's not an artist. What separates Michelangelo from Hirst is that Michelangelo was an artist and Hirst isn't."
Art Museum professional Julian Spalding in his book Con Art – Why You Ought To Sell Your Damien Hirsts While You Can 

“That’s not an art achievement, it’s a financial achievement.”
Art dealer Michael Findlay commenting on Hirst's multi million dollar auction in 2000 

“Art is about life and the art world’s about money” 
“We’re here for a good time, not a long time.” 
Artist Damien Hirst

Had to happen

Mari Kasurinen's My Little-Damien

In Tokoroa...

 ...thinking about Damien Hirst

Lookalike

In a post we’d only get away with on Saturday here’s the inside story on Barbie. “I think it may be time” says Jason Freeny as he starts off on a Visible Barbie jag. The building of the Damien Hirst lookalike is shown in a step-by-step process on Frenny’s Facebook page which you can reach it via his website here.

Strictly two per customer

Target might have Jeff Koons Balloon Dog tied up but here The Warehouse is also hot on contemporary art lookalikes with a version of Damien Hirst's skull work For the love of God on the shelves. (Thanks S) You can watch the making of the Hirst version here.

Success

"I sometimes feel that I have nothing to say and I want to communicate this." 

Damien Hirst 

Image: Damien Hirst work at the Tate

Image nation

The first time we saw a line of cigarette butts on a shelf (apart the back room of a hotel in Blackball c.1969) was at Te Papa in their first international contemporary art exhibition (and the last) Pictura Britannica in 1998. From memory it was a work by Damien Hirst called After Stubbs (or if not it was in the same zone). OK, a terrible joke but still a pretty good work with the butts looking like mini marquettes given their gallery context. So there was a ‘lookalike’ moment when we saw the cigarette butt image illustrating an article on smoking in a recent copy of the Listener. This time it was art’s turn to be subverted as the image on closer examination turned out to be taken from a Damien Hirst exhibition. It has been plopped into a stock image library we assume and from there lifted uncredited to the magazine at the service of an editorial metaphor.

Images: Top, Damien Hirst The Abyss. Bottom Damien Hirst, After Stubbs

Art chart

Sarah Lazarovic’s charts Damien Hirst in the National Post

Dotty

More on the Damien Hirst spotathon. There’s been a winner in his global spot the spots chase and it is 27-year-old Valentine Uhovski, a former Russian child star, socialite and Hirst groupie. In one week he travelled the required 30,000 plus miles to check in on each of the Damien Hirst Gagosian exhibitions dotted around the world. 

Uhovski’s reward is a Damien Hirst print (yes, a spotted one) and the latter day Phileas Fogg has predictably told the media that ‘no way’ would he sell it. Hirst himself has famously said he only ever painted five of the spot paintings himself because he found the process more boring than bat shit (or something like that). Not the experience of the 760 registered spot seekers three of whom have already completed the task.

Image: Dot Boots created by Spanish designer Manolo Blahnik and Damien Hirst in 2002.

Spot prize

Here’s a chance to pump up the international side of your art collection. British artist Damien Hirst has offered to give anyone who attends all the Gagosian gallery venues showing his spot paintings between 12 January and 18 February a free personalized print. The only problem is that Larry Gagosian has 11 galleries and they’re scattered all over the world. Still, if you’re up for it, here are the addresses: 980 Madison Avenue, New York; 555 West 24th Street New York; 522 West 21st Street New York; 456 North Camden Drive Beverly Hills; 6-24 Britannia Street London; 17-19 Davies Street London; Via Francesco Crispi 1600187 Rome; 4 rue de Ponthieu 75008 Paris; 19 place de Longemalle 1204 Geneva; 7/F Pedder Building 12 Pedder Street Central Hong Kong and 3 Merlin Street Athens.

In XS

Well we all missed this, the ultimate event or ultimate nightmare depending on where you come from. Lady Gaga playing a Damien Hirst piano. Apparently Francesco Vezzoli got the Gaga to jam on the piano at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art back in 2009

Damien Hirst in Newtown

Hirst's Red Hot Chili Peppers album cover art pasted up on a Wellington building