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Times
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Damien Hirst and plagiarism: ‘All my ideas are stolen anyway'
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines the verb to plagiarise as follows: '1 v.t. Take and use as one's own (the thoughts, writings, inventions, etc., of another person); copy (literary work, ideas, etc.) improperly or without acknowledgement; pass off the thoughts, work, etc., of (another person) as one's own. 2 v.i. Practise or commit plagiarism.' Damien Hirst, who has been accused, not for the first time, of pinching the idea for his best work, A Thousand Years (1990) — the one with the cow's head, the maggots and the insect-o-cutor in a vitrine — from his Goldsmiths contemporary Hamad Butt, is probably used to it by now. Indeed, in 2018 he stated in a filmed interview with fellow artist Peter Blake, 'All my ideas are stolen anyway,' claiming that he was told by his tutor Michael Craig-Martin, 'Don't borrow ideas, steal them' (possibly Craig-Martin had Picasso's famous adage in mind: 'Good artists copy, great artists steal'). That, Hirst said, was when he realised 'you don't have to be original' — and Blake agreed. 'Nothing is original — it's what you do with it.' Still, Butt's Transmission, which is about to go on show at the Whitechapel Gallery in London as part of Apprehensions, the first big survey exhibition of his work, does indeed have remarkable similarities in its ideas and execution to Hirst's work. Shown at Butt's degree show, also in 1990, but developed earlier in prototype in his studio (and seen there, claimed Butt, by Hirst, who overlapped with him at Goldsmiths for two years), it was a multipart work, one element of which was Fly-Piece, a cabinet containing sugar-soaked paper inscribed with enigmatic statements, and fly pupae, which hatched, digested the paper and then died. • Damien Hirst at 60: My plan to make art for 200 years after I die It doesn't take a genius to see why Butt, who died of Aids-related complications in 1994 aged 32, felt Hirst had appropriated his work, and the critic Jean Fisher, who taught both artists, referred to Butt's 'clear influence on Hirst'. The Times approached Hirst for comment. But this is just one of many times Hirst has been accused of plagiarism, which in art is notoriously difficult to prove. In 2010 Charles Thomson, founder of the stuckists, collated a list of 15 examples for Jackdaw Magazine. Some were supported by the artists in question, such as the Los Angeles artist Lori Precious, who said she went into 'a state of shock' after seeing Hirst's butterfly works and noting their resemblance to her mandala works made of butterflies. (Hirst has never publicly acknowledged Precious's remarks, which were not made through legal representation, and told Blake that he got the idea from Victorian tea trays.) Some were Thomson's assertion, such as the similarity between Hirst's early medicine cabinet works and Joseph Cornell's 1943 sculpture Pharmacy. Hirst's press officer at the time described the article as 'poor journalism' and said they would be issuing a 'comprehensive rebuttal'. If this exists, I can't find it. John LeKay, once a good friend of Hirst's, has claimed the artist has repurposed a number of his ideas, including skulls covered in crystals, which LeKay first experimented with in 1993, and has intimated that Hirst's In the Name of the Father, 2005, which featured the corpse of a sheep splayed to resemble a crucifixion pose, was probably inspired by his own 1987 work This Is My Body, This Is My Blood, which does the same thing but without preserving it in formaldehyde. • 25 moments that made Tate Modern — seeds, spiders and sharks LeKay also claimed that Hirst got the ideas for his pickled animal works from a catalogue LeKay lent him, for the Carolina Biological Supply Company, which sold science education products (which is a perfectly reasonable and valid place to get ideas — they don't usually just come out of thin air). Hirst declined to comment on the claims. He did agree, in 2000, to pay an undisclosed sum, out of court, to two children's charities when Humbrol took umbrage at his large-scale bronze sculpture Hymn, describing it as a direct copy of the company's Young Scientist Anatomy Set, designed by Norman Emms (apparently Hirst's young son had one). Mostly, though, claims have gone unanswered. In 2017 Jason deCaires Taylor claimed there were 'striking similarities' between his underwater sculptural installations, which he has been making since 2006, and the works that made up Hirst's Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, exhibited at that year's Venice Biennale. Hirst denied that he had breached copyright and a spokeswoman said he had been interested in 'coralised' objects since the 1990s. In 2022 he exhibited a suite of paintings of cherry blossom at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, which depicted dark branches against a pale blue sky, with petals made of dots. The English artist and writer Joe Machine told a newspaper that he thought when he saw them that he was looking at his own earlier paintings. (A stretch, to be honest. Stylistically they're not particularly similar and it's not as if artists haven't been painting cherry blossoms for centuries. To me, they just look like Hirst has rather savvily combined his dot motif with a tried-and-tested subject matter to appeal to the large east Asian market.) • Read more art reviews, guides and interviews The fact is you cannot copyright an idea. It's true that Thomas Downing was doing spot paintings in the Sixties. So did John Armeleder in the Eighties. Part of the fury around Hirst's alleged appropriation of ideas is that he's made so much more money out of them than anyone else — his success has created its own market, regardless of the quality of the work, which is variable to say the least. I doubt this latest, repeated accusation will make the slightest difference to Hirst's reputation. People know what they're getting with him, and Butt's Transmission, which the Whitechapel will show with the insect component remade for the first time since his degree show (Butt reportedly destroyed Fly-Piece after Hirst's work was shown) is likely to remain a frustrating footnote in art history. And as Dominic Johnson, curator of the exhibition, carefully remarks in the catalogue: 'It's always interesting to consider how and where artists get ideas from especially when working in shared spaces or contexts (as was the case for so many of the YBAs and their peers), as there is inevitably always going to be a degree of cross-pollination — conscious or unconscious.' Still, Picasso's pithy soundbite doesn't mean that stealing makes you a great artist. Mediocre artists steal too. And maybe the suggestion that A Thousand Years, in my opinion Hirst's finest work (he made it aged 25; he's 60 now and nothing he's done since has been as good, not even the shark), was heavily reliant on someone else's idea might, on darker nights, give Hirst a moment's pause.
Telegraph
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Damien Hirst accused of plagiarism in breakthrough artwork
Damien Hirst is embroiled in a plagiarism row after being accused of stealing the idea of using live flies in his breakthrough work from a fellow artist. Hamad Butt, a classmate of Hirst at Goldsmiths university in south London, displayed Fly-Piece, consisting of live flies in a vitrine, at his degree show in June 1990. A month later, Hirst reportedly unveiled A Thousand Years, a glass case full of live flies feeding on a cow's head, which elevated him to worldwide acclaim. Butt, meanwhile, Butt died in 1994 aged 32 after developing Aids, and having failed to break through into the art world. Dominic Johnson, a curator who has overseen a new exhibition of Butt's work at the Whitechapel Gallery in east London, claimed A Thousand Years 'appears to have directly appropriated from Butt'. Mr Johnson, a professor of performance and visual culture at Queen Mary University, London, claimed Hirst 'likely encountered Butt's piece first-hand in its development' as Butt had produced a prototype in his studio in 1989. It is claimed that Hirst displayed A Thousand Years at his exhibition Gambler which opened in July 1990. Butt felt that Hirst had appropriated his idea and 'was unhappy when Hirst's sculpture received greater acclaim', Mr Johnson wrote in the exhibition's catalogue, according to The Times. 'Whether the appropriation was direct or not, Butt chose to withdraw the Fly-Piece from his subsequent installation [in November 1990],' he added. Butt's original artwork, which has since been lost, has been recreated for the exhibition. Hirst continued to produce bio-art, most notably animals preserved in formaldehyde, including a dove, a pair of calves, and a shark dissected into three pieces. He dominated the British art world for two decades and has been reported to be the world's richest artist, with an estimated net worth of more than £300 million. The Turner Prize-winning artist's career has been dogged by allegations of plagiarism. In 2010, an art magazine published an article accusing Hirst of producing 15 works 'inspired by others' including his work Pharmacy. Charles Thomson, an artist and co-founder of Stuckists, a group which campaigns against conceptual art, tallied the number of plagiarism claims relating to Hirst's work in Jackdaw magazine. In 2007, former friend John LeKay claimed Hirst's diamond skull For the Love of God was based on his own crystal skulls made in 1993 Although Hirst has faced allegations that some of his works were the ideas of others, copyright does not protect ideas, only a specific form of expression. In 2000, it was disclosed that Hirst had paid an undisclosed sum to prevent legal action for breach of copyright by designers of a toy which resembled his famous bronze sculpture, Hymn. Hirst, 60, has always denied allegations of plagiarism but admitted in a 2018 interview that 'all my ideas are stolen'.
The Guardian
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Secrets of the hair salon, from high street to high rise: Eileen Perrier/Dianne Minnicucci review
The art world is obsessed with the idea of 'being seen'. In a culture of lookism, being seen is understood as tantamount to existing, even to survival. But being seen is complicated. Both the current exhibitions at Autograph grapple with this through photographs by two women of the same generation working in portraiture. Eileen Perrier's A Thousand Small Stories occupies the ground-floor gallery. Since the 1990s, Perrier's work has centred on setting up temporary photographic studios, in homes, hair salons, on the streets of Brixton and Peckham in London, and at a metro station in Paris. Her 2009 exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London displayed large-format Polaroid portraits taken in pop-up studios at Petticoat Lane market and in the nearby 23-storey tower block Denning Point. The travelling portrait studio has been a device Perrier has used for 30 years, to take photography into diverse communities and tackle the politics of beauty and identity. This is the first survey of her work. Perrier makes portraits that don't rely on beauty but find it everywhere. She doesn't flatter – in fact the lighting and poses in her pictures in some series are direct references to school photographs, such as Grace (2000) in which her subjects, including the photographer and her mother, share the physical trait diastema (a gap between the teeth). Perrier's subjects are mostly regular people, commuters, passersby. In these quick encounters with ordinary lives, Perrier gives glimpses of beauty where you don't look for it. An image of two women on a leather chesterfield, from the series Red, Gold and Green (made between 1996 and 1997 in the homes of three generations of British Ghanaians), scintillates with shining confidence, from the women's style to the polished ceramics gleaming on the dresser behind them. The makeshift red cloth Perrier has hung up behind them is a reminder that this is a studio, too, where an unexpected moment of beauty, through the alchemy of the camera, becomes an eternity. There's an unresolved paradox in Perrier's pictures, between the artifice of beauty and the photographer's constant quest to find it. Perrier acknowledges this, between celebrating beauty and critiquing it, right from the start of her career. One of the earliest works in the show belongs to her documentary portrait series, Afro Hair and Beauty Show. Between 1998 and 2003, Perrier photographed women attending the annual show at Alexandra Palace, one of the venue's biggest events of the time. It's a document of evolving styles, creativity and the importance of self-expression through hair. While making the portraits, Perrier also began collecting and photographing products for black hair and skin from London shops and photographing them. She turned these grooming goods into a wallpaper that also charts a controversial side of the beauty industry: Dear Heart promises skin lightening, hair relaxant for children is marketed as Beautiful Beginnings. Perrier is positioned through this show as an important counter to a Photoshopped, retouched reality, in a culture of beauty and image worship. Upstairs Dianne Minnicucci's small exhibition of new works – made as part of a residency funded by Autograph – picks up on the impact of white-centric beauty standards on women of colour. Minnicucci confesses to not being comfortable in front of the camera herself – she has portrayed her family and domestic scenes with an intimate, autobiographical tenor but had never ventured in front of the lens herself. Her show, Belonging and Beyond, is about a personal struggle with self-image, compounded by photography, and now using photography as a means to unravel and understand it. Like Perrier, Minnicucci began by dismantling and reconstructing her studio – bringing it into the classroom of Thomas Tallis school, south-east London, where she is head of photography. Working alongside her students for six months, inviting them into the work as collaborators, Minnicucci was forced to practise what she'd preached – to embrace discomfort. A series of wistful black and white self-portraits sees Minnicucci try to break through this awkward confrontation, all of them shot in Lesnes Abbey Woods. We see her figuring out what to do with her body, her hands, her gaze. Half-masked by spiky shrubs and trees, thesepictures have a quiet, self-conscious grace. Minnicucci dressed in white in this misty atmosphere looks shyly away from the camera, tentative, uncertain. This is not really about the images but what the process reveals. In a film accompanying the images, Minnicucci realises where her trepidation in taking self-portraits as a black woman might come from: 'Because I haven't been exposed to those images, maybe that's why?' Eileen Perrier's A Thousand Small Stories, and Dianne Minnicucci's Belonging and Beyond are both at Autograph, London, until 13 September
The Journal
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Journal
A stunning visual art exhibition in one of Dublin's most iconic cultural spaces
A VISUALLY STUNNING exhibition that tackles thought-provoking themes and explores questions that are deeply relevant in the modern-day is open to the public at one of Dublin's landmark cultural venues. The Dream Pool Intervals, a stunning new series of works by Ailbhe Ní Bhriain, is currently on display at Parnell Square's iconic Hugh Lane Gallery with admission free of charge. Visitors who come to experience The Dream Pool Intervals can expect to step into a visual world designed to explore questions of technological and ecological progress. Artist Ailbhe Ní Bhriain at the opening of Ailbhe Ní Bhriain: The Dream Pool Intervals at Hugh Lane Gallery © Naoise Culhane Photography 2025 The centrepiece of this stirring exhibit is five large-scale jacquard tapestries woven from several different materials, including cotton, wool, silk and lurex. These intricately woven works offer a commentary on an array of issues which loom large over the modern social consciousness, such as climate change, colonialism, industrialism, nature and the built environment. The effects created by Ní Bhriain's approach are unique and striking, as fragments of archival portraits merge with images of underground caves and architectural ruin, conjuring ideas of the interplay 'between contemporary threats of extinction and ancient narratives of the underworld'. Installation view Hugh Lane Gallery, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain: The Dream Pool Intervals. Image © Hugh Lane Gallery, 2025 The installations are thought-provoking, and walking through the exhibition offers visitors a chance to reflect while experiencing the work of one of Ireland's most exciting visual artists. Advertisement Ní Bhriain is an internationally celebrated artist whose work has been exhibited at venues including Broad Museum, Michigan; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Hammer Museum, LA; Istanbul Modern, Turkey; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; Innsbruck International Biennial, Austria; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, France and the 16th Lyon Biennale. Installation view Hugh Lane Gallery, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain: The Dream Pool Intervals. Image © Hugh Lane Gallery, 2025 Speaking about the intention behind her work, Ní Bhriain said: 'In the tapestries are images of destroyed architecture – gathered from multiple sources, icons of war and climate disaster that seem to define this period'. The title of the exhibition is a reference to 'The Dream Pool Essays', a text by the Chinese polymath Shen Kuo in 1088, which includes geological recordings that are considered to be the earliest observations of climate change. Barbara Dawson, Director at the Hugh Lane Gallery, said of the exhibition: 'In Ailbhe Ní Bhriain's monumental tapestries we are presented with mysterious mises en scéne in the ruins of previous world orders forcing us to rethink perceived concepts of progress and advancement in the face of human and ecological fragmentation.' Installation view Hugh Lane Gallery, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain: The Dream Pool Intervals. Image © Hugh Lane Gallery, 2025 Located in the heart of Dublin's city centre, the Hugh Lane Gallery is a cultural cornerstone of the city. In addition to The Dream Pool Intervals exhibition currently running, visitors can also take in the works of impressionists such as Monet and Degas, as well as Francis Bacon's Studio and many other works from the collection, all free of charge. Michael Dempsey, Head of Exhibitions, Hugh Lane Gallery, and Curator of the The Dream Pool Intervals said: 'Ní Bhriain seeks to locate our growing anxieties of crises within a world where colonial and industrial legacies are fused with the consciousness of our current moment. 'Capturing the mood of society today, the relevance of Ní Bhriain's themes cannot be understated. The Hugh Lane Gallery is delighted to present her work'. The Dream Pool Intervals exhibition, brought to you by the Hugh Lane Gallery and Dublin City Council, is open to the public until 28 September. Admission is free of charge. Find out more about what's going on at The Hugh Lane Gallery here .
