www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/god-save-the-damien-hirst-ripoff-industry-1608219.html


God save the Damien Hirst rip-off industry!

Artists launch orchestrated campaign to flout copyright of Britart 'bully'

By Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent

Friday, 13 February 2009


It all began when the Turner Prize-winning multimillionaire artist Damien Hirst threatened to sue an entrepreneurial 16-year-old who used an image of his diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God, to create a collage to sell on the internet.

Hirst reported the teenager, who styles himself Cartrain, to the Design and Artists Copyright Society, which ordered him to hand over his £200 profit to Hirst, as reported in The Independent last December. Now a collective of prominent artists is seeking revenge on the teenager's behalf.

Creators of the website redragtoabull.com, who include Jimmy Cauty, a former member of KLF, Jamie Reid, best known for designing the Sex Pistols' "God Save The Queen" single cover, and artist Billy Childish, have produced a series of skull images which flouts copyright regulations and deliberately provokes one of the most powerful – and richest – artists alive.

Writing to The Independent, Cauty said: "Unlike Cartrain and his gallery, we are not intimidated by lawyers and if an injunction is issued, we will simply ignore it on the grounds of freedom of speech." He suggested the concept of copyright, which was changing in the music industry, had some way to go before it was "abolished and replaced with something more flexible".

Reid, meanwhile, called Hirst a "hypocritical and greedy art bully", adding: "Hasn't he got enough?"

The limited edition images, sold under the title For the Love of Disruptive Strategies and Utopian Visions in Contemporary Art and Culture, a pun on the title of Hirst's skull, are designed by Reid as a deliberate variation on The Sex Pistols' cover. There is also an image of a man whose face is superimposed with Hirst's skull reading a book entitled Copyright and Intellectual Property Law.

Another image pretends to have been created by Hirst's fellow YBAs, the Chapman Brothers. It bears a graffitied skull image and the words: "We Always Knew You were a C**t!" An exact copy of Cartrain's collage is also on sale. A representative of Hirst's company, Science, did not comment yesterday, but Jake Chapman good-naturedly said: "To be honest, after our persistent 'collaborations' with Goya, we're the last people on earth to claim the sanctity of authorship."

Thanks for posting that Howler.
I'm looking forward to the Jamie Reid one arriving here . I'll hang it next to the matching queen one I have with the identical flag and size .
So satisfying to see Damien Hirst getting a boot in the bollocks ... Though he's probably in Mustique or somewhere and hasn't heard yet