Andy Warhol, number 28
 
I know perfectly well that these shirts are little more than a quick grab at fashion trendiness, but I like ‘em anyway. The whole idea of a French firm assigning American sports jerseys to various iconic creative people (none of whom would probably be able to tell apart a catcher’s mitt from a hockey stick) seems pretty witty to me.

These come from a French fashion outfit called LES (ART)ISTS, who say that these designs were inspired by “American football jerseys,” which seems fair enough.

The regular T-shirts are €45 ($60), and the flannel versions are €99 ($133). Actually, they seem to have only the b/w version (such as the KAWS one) on their site. I prefer the more playful and colorful ones, they strike me as much more clever and engaging.

The odds are that the numbers were chosen more or less at random, but I can’t help reading meanings in (busted, I’m a sports fan). WARHOL 23 makes sense for anyone who knows who Michael Jordan is [Update: DM reader “ThatGuy” points out that Warhol is 28 on all three shirts], and beyond that, I admire the use of rather high numbers. In baseball high numbers are generally used for scrubs who don’t play, the types who make it to spring training and then don’t make the squad. If we’re talking football, the numbers have specific meanings—for instance, a number in the 80s means you’re a wide receiver, anywhere from 50 to 79 means you’re either a lineman or a linebacker, and so on.
 

Keith Haring, number 58
 

Takashi Murakami, number 62
 

Damien Hirst, number 75
 

Jean-Michel Basquiat, number 60
 
See the rest of the jerseys after the jump…...
 

“Spot Painted Art Wars Stormtrooper Helmet” by Damien Hirst and “Haitian Witch Doctor” by David Bailey

We’ve all seen our major cities, and probably even some rural areas, dotted with ceramic cows and horses and human hands and the like, all painted in crazy colors—a trend that has about run its course, if you ask me—but here’s a variation even I can get behind. Ben Moore, founder of the UK public art enterprise art below, in collaboration with the original designer of the iconic stormtrooper helmet from Star Wars, Andrew Sinsworth, have asked several of the world’s most renowned contemporary artists to take a stab at putting their personal imprint on the helmet. The project is called, aptly, “Art Wars,” and the helmets were on display at the Saatchi Gallery in London last week and will be showcased “for 4 weeks across billboard space on an entire platform of Regent’s Park Underground station to coincide with Frieze (17-20th October).”

Thankfully, the artists ran with the idea, and a lot of the designs show considerable cheek and whimsy. Among the artists is Mr. Brainwash, who came to public prominence as a result of Banksy’s 2010 movie Exit Through the Gift Shop; his entry appropriates Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup canvases and adds an aerosol spray top.
 

 
My favorite might be Jason Brooks’ homage to the legendary Formula 1 race driver Ayrton Senna (if you haven’t seen the documentary Senna, you really must):
 

 
Check out the entire range of helmets at the “Art Wars” website.
 

 
via designboom

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Don’t Steal Pencils From Damien Hirst!
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen collaborate on over-priced handbag with Damien Hirst

 
If you’ve got way too much money and no common sense whatsoever, listen up: the fashionista Olsen twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley, have produced a stunningly over-priced crocodile handbag festooned with colorful pill appliqués, in collaboration artist Damien Hirst.

The price? A mere $55,000. I wonder if any of those pills are Xanax?

“Damien, I’ve got Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s people on the line. They want to make a hideously overpriced handbag with you. Are you interested?”

“Damien says he’d love to be involved. Terrific, thanks. You, too. Bye!”

Only twelve of the bags are available. They go on sale December 12th exclusively at justoneeye.com.
 

 

 
I don’t think of Damien Hirst as an artist, I tend to think of him as a successful commodity broker. One who has made money out of selling ideas.

The question of whether Hirst is an artist or not, is irrelevant. The question should be is he any good at what he does? Yes, Hirst is very good at what he does. One can see this from the amount of money he has made. In 2010, Hirst’s estimated net worth was over $300m.

Hirst’s financial success is the only way we can judge Damien Hirst the artist in terms of his career. He has rarely produced anything of much originality, for example his “Spin” paintings lifted directly from ideas contained in the 60’s children’s toy Spiro-Matic, while his sculpture Hymn breached copyright of Humbrol’s Young Scientist Anatomy Set, and led to an out-of-court settlement.

While one of his most recent works, For the Love of God, raised similar controversies. The work also suggested Hirst believes longevity in art can only be achieved by making something that is financially valuable - in this case a skull encrusted with $40m’s worth of diamonds, which was sold for $50m. Diamonds, it seems, are forever.

The following documentary, Damien Hirst: Thoughts, Work, Life is:

...an intimate and revealing portrait, Damien Hirst talks openly and honestly about his life. From his early years growing up in Leeds and his move to London in the early 80s, to his time spent at Goldsmiths College where he curated the now infamous Freeze show that brought the Young British Artists together. And, of course, his meteoric rise to fame in the 90s. The film includes never-before-seen footage, largely collated from the artist’s own archives, and shows a private side of the artist rarely seen by the public.

In interview Hirst generally comes across as a likable, chummy bloke, who seems rather ordinary. What makes him different is that Damien Hirst has had the self-belief and ambition to put his ideas into reality. And this has made him very successful.
 

 
With Damien Hirst’s forthcoming retrospective at the Tate Modern, London, the Observer newspaper is offering an exclusive download to 4 poster’s from the show.

Click here to download the Damien Hirst poster of “his exquisite paintings of butterflies”. Here for “spots”. Click here for the famous shark. And here “the splash that got the critics in a spin”.

Read the Observer‘s exclusive interview with Damien Hirst here, and for details of Tate Moden’s Damien Hirst exhibition check here
 

 

 
Via the Observer
 

 
Hennessy Youngman may not know that much about artist Damien Hirst, but that won’t stop him. His wide-eyed rant about Damien Hirst being “the Bono of the art world” is wildly entertaining.
 

 
(via The World’s Best Ever)

 
Along with Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, Marc Quinn belongs to that select group known, for better or worse, as The Young British Artists (YBAs).  While Hirst has his formaldehyde-dipped sharks, and Emin has her unmade beds, Quinn is perhaps best known for Siren, his solid-gold, wildly contorted statue of Kate Moss, of whom the artist calls, charmingly, a “cultural hallucination.” 

You can watch below as Quinn explains how, in creating Siren, he drew inspiration from a ‘70s museum trip to see Tutankhamun.  Okay, a Goldfingered Kate Moss is nice, but I’m more intrigued by the Quinn piece unveiled yesterday at London’s National Portrait Gallery:

Quinn has been making casts of his own head and creating models using his own frozen blood since 1991.  He has made a new one every five years to document how he is aging, but the first three are all overseas.  The gallery said the acquisition of the latest edition, made in 2006 and entitled “Self,” was a major addition to its contemporary collection.

“Quinn’s ‘Self’ is an outstanding acquisition—a major icon of contemporary British art, both startling and revealing,” said Sandy Nairne, director of the National Portrait Gallery.  The gallery paid 300,000 pounds for what it describes as an “unconventional, innovative and challenging” piece of art, bought using a grant from the Art Fund charity and other donations.

Quinn used about nine or 10 pints of blood for the artwork, which he said was all about pushing the boundaries.  “To me this sculpture came from wanting to push portraiture to an extreme, a representation which not only has the form of the sitter, but is actually made from the sitter’s flesh,” he said. “It only exists in certain conditions, in this case being frozen, analogous to me, with a person being alive.

 
London Gallery Acquires Blood Head

More on Self @ Factual TV

 
From today’s Independent:

How much is a box of pencils worth?  Fifty pence?  ?Ǭ