Damien Hirst's Most Outrageous Moments

Image via Complex Original

Love him or hate him, Damien Hirst is a force to be reckoned with.  He’s already in every art museum and magazine, and in recent days, thanks to the opening of his worldwide Gagosian exhibitions, he’s all over every blog, newspaper, TV or radio show, even YouTube.  But the buzz isn’t about his actual work in the exhibitions — it never is with Hirst — but about every other element of the elaborate circumstances he creates for every occasion. (Basically, he makes a living creating bad ass moments in art history.)

This is not a man who can just do something quietly, normally, and without controversy.  He is a lightening rod for media attention, and then covers his fingers in giant rings just to make sure the lightning has every possible chance to strike.

Though he’s only 46, Hirst has been living like it’s his midlife crisis for 20 years — buying expensive toys, joining a rock band, making crass and incendiary remarks, and wearing giant sunglasses day and night, indoors and out.

Here are some of the outrageous moments of from the Hirst saga.

6. Vindaloo

Hirst’s band Fat Les had a huge hit with their single Vindaloo.  The goofy, loud soccer chant went to #2 on the UK charts with its release in 1998 (as an unofficial World Cup anthem), and made an appearance again, though not quite so high, during the most recent World Cup. Between bouts of repetitive chanting, one of the song’s few lyrics asks, “can I introduce you please to a lump of cheddar cheese?” (and they don’t mean cheddar like money), and then boasts eating vindaloo – the spicy Indian curry – by the bucketful.  Let’s hope they have Pepto Bismol by the bucketful, too.

The band’s other bizarre singles include “Naughty Christmas (Goblin in the Office)” and “Who Invented Fish & Chips?”, which features a young Lily Allen.

5. The Complete Spot Challenge

Hirst’s latest shenanigan comprises a kind of posh scavenger hunt for the über-rich jet-set.  He has distributed 300 of his spot paintings to 11 Gagosian Galleries worldwide and issued the Complete Spot Challenge:  anyone who sees them all will receive a free, signed print from him.  Participants will get a card to be punched at each location, much like a get-your-10th-footlong-free card at Subway.  So for those of you who work so laboriously to spend the time and money to travel to 11 galleries in 8 cities in 7 countries, you can be rewarded for your hard luxury with yet another luxury item – a spot painting, in a convenient carry-on size for your further world travels.

In 2008, Hirst declared that he would stop making spot paintings, though he has not, as the various exhibitions includes works made through 2011.

3. Black Sheep

One of Hirst’s earlier animal-in-formaldehyde works was Away from the Flock, a white lamb suspended in a vitrine.  When the work was on view in London in 1994, an artist from Oxford famously came and poured black ink into the tank.  The work was not significantly damaged and was repaired within 24 hours, however, Hirst pressed charges against the vandal who was sentenced to two years probation.  Later, however, Hirst capitalized on the man’s crime, creating and selling a book that overlaid an image of Away from the Flock with a black cloud that resembled the ink floating at the top of the tank.  One man’s probation is another man’s profit.

4. For The Love Of God

Though covering a human skull with £15 million ($30 million) worth of diamonds is an outrageous act in itself, that doesn’t even begin to describe the outrageousness that accumulated around Hirst’s infamous 2007 work, For the Love of God.  He also tried to describe it as a kind of “found art” or junk sculpture in a BBC interview, when he said, “as an artist you always make work from what’s around you, and, you know, money was around me.”  But the really weird part of the diamond skull has to do with its sale, or lack thereof.  Hirst’s original asking price was £50 million ($100 million), leaving a marginal value of $70 million that represented the pure artistic integrity of the work – that is, for $100 million you get $30 million worth of diamonds and $70 worth of Hirst’s genius.

Hirst claims the piece did garner the asking price when it was purchased by a consortium of buyers, including himself, his gallery White Cube, and several other buyers who have together purchased about 50% of the work.  However, many in the art world are skeptical that it sold at all, as there is no paper trail and no records of the exorbitant taxes that would have to be paid on a price tag like that.  So, either Hirst has earned the highest price for a single work by a living artist, or he has kept up a 5-year lie that says he has.

2. Taking Money From a Baby

In 2008, a 16-year-old high school student and graffiti writer Cartrain made a collage that included an image of Hirst’s diamond skull, and sold them on the internet.  Hirst sicced the British copyright infringement officials on the young boy, who confiscated his work and forced him to give up the money he had made from selling his own collage.  The £200 would have been as good as pennies to Hirst, but that’s practically a year’s salary for a 16-year old boy.

The next year, a prankish Cartrain swiped a pack of ordinary colored pencils from the Hirst installation Pharmacy at the Tate Britain.  He left a note explaining that he was taking the pencils as hostages, with the return of his collages as ransom.  This pack of totally normal, Faber Castell pencils that were only a small portion of his installation, Hirst claimed were valued at £500,000 ($1 million), and Cartrain was arrested for what would have been the largest art theft ever in Britain.  Luckily for this kid’s future, the charges were eventually dropped.

All this copyright, self-righteousness, and litigiousness from a man who once said, “Lucky for me, when I went to art school we were a generation where we didn't have any shame about stealing other people's ideas. You call it a tribute."

1. Buying a Castle

In 2005, Hirst became the proud owner of Toddington Manor, an extravagant 19th-century building resembling a medieval fortress on 124 acres in Gloucestershire, England.   He purchased it for a mere £3 million, less than the just one of his animal-in-formaldehyde works.  Restoration and renovations are currently underway to turn the 300-room house into a home for his family of 5, and a gallery for his art collection.   Even while it is under construction, Hirst, not to be outdone on even the slightest account, claims that his mansion is wrapped in the world’s largest span of scaffolding.