This isn’t exactly the gun fight at the O.K Corral, more like handbags at dawn, but a very rich man and a poor kid are having something of a tiff and in truth I doubt it’s doing either much harm – publicity-wise that is. The man is none other than Damien Hirst, an artist wealthy beyond the dreams or most mere mortal artists. The kid, is a lad called Cartrain, with aspirations of becoming the next Banksy, not so much for his art work as his stunts. Art stunts. I say good luck to the guy, he’s slowly picking up a following from this tactic, not my favourite of his, but all in all, if it gets him noticed good on him.
What depresses me is how ready Damien is to clobber the slightest hint of dissidence with the full might and power of the law, a legal sledgehammer to swat an artistic fly as it were. When you’re big, I mean really really big, you begin to understand that mimicry is flattery, the amount of artists that reference Andy Warhol for instance, (I’m one of them btw), means that that crazy old Pop Art mop-head will most likely never fade from public consicousness.
So what does the hoo hah all boil down to? Some pencils, expensive pencils, but still just a pack of pencils. That’s the problem with creating Duchampian installations, you know Found Objects, or rather, in this case Bought Objects. The items in question are a box of box of very rare Faber Castell (dated 1990) Mongol 482 series pencils were removed from Damien Hirst’s Pharmacy Installation.
Cartrain’s reasoning for the theft was a long running feud which began when Damien Hirst contracted the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DAC’s) to send a string of legal letters to Cartrain’s art dealer Tom Cuthbert at 100artworks.com in regards to Cartrain’s series of artworks For the Love of God.
Cartrain has his artistic supporters, including the likes of Banksy, but for the main part, most likely due to the funding and legal clout behind Damien Hirst, no one really wants to comment. I suppose it comes down to whether you view the whole debacle as art theft or art stunt. I’m not really sure, I don’t know if I actually care either. I understand why many believe the basis of urban and graffiti art should hinge upon such guerilla tactics but personally I’d rather let and see the works themselves do the talking.
Cartrain obviously created work that stepped over the line of appropriation, and ventured into breach of copyright, but in all honesty it’s a tradition in art, or rather it used to be, that artists would copy, mimic, adapt, and deface each others’ works. The same applies to the world of street art and graffiti.
If Hirst doesn’t hand back Cartrain’s work, he’s threatened to sharpen the pencils (god forbid)… I somehow doubt much will come of this. If Cartrain is banged up for this there will be an enormous backlash, if Hirst buys himself another packet of pencils the story is over. Both of them will have to stay after school for detention if they’re not careful.
I’ll let you judge for yourselves.
