Admittedly, it’s not quite a diamond-encrusted skull, but Damien Hirst has turned his hand to designing a one-off Harley Davidson Cross Bones and matching helmet. Hirst’s signature rainbow livery was applied in his main workshop in Briscombe before the bike was disassembled and shipped to Los Angeles, where it will be auctioned at the Creative Arts Agency on 23 April on behalf of Project Angel Food, a charity which provides meals to homebound HIV sufferers. Bidding is expected to start at $100,000 but should end considerably higher if Hirst’s track record is anything to go by.
Well this looks positively awful. Congratulations Heist. I wonder if he even bothered looking at the final product when his team of art slaves finished throwing paint on the bike? I doubt it, as he was probably too busy stuffing wads of cash up his ass to smuggle out to wherever his tax haven is. Yes, the charitable donation is obviously a positive.
An art collector has filed a lawsuit against Louis Vuitton after discovering that his $12,000 Murakami prints, purchased at the MOCA exhibition of Murakami’s work, came from repurposed materials (meaning they were just reused factory Louis Vuitton matterials). The company says art’s ‘ambiguity’ is part of the ‘bargain.’
They may not have realized it, but the folks who snapped up as much as $4-million worth of limited-edition prints by artist Takashi Murakami two years ago at the special Louis Vuitton boutique inside his exhibition at L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art apparently were getting nicely mounted handbags — minus the snaps and straps.
At least one buyer, Clint Arthur, is steamed enough to have sued Louis Vuitton for fraud. “Louis Vuitton . . . knew that neither [Arthur] nor anyone else would pay $6,000″ if it was clear they were getting factory leftovers from handbag production, says a legal memo that Arthur’s attorneys filed last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, countering Louis Vuitton’s attempt to have Judge A. Howard Matz dismiss the case as groundless.
Awkwardly, the guy is refusing to take a refund of the $12,000 he paid for two prints, plus interest. Louis Vuitton contends that his suit is merely an “opportunistic” bid for “windfall profits.” If Clint was smart he’d just take his money and run.
In 2006, Tokyo born Akane Koide presented a booth at GEISAI, and was scouted by Takashi Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki artist collective at the young age of 15. The themes of her works speak of the trials and tribulations of junior and high-school students, expressed firsthand by junior-high school student Koide.
She has what I consider the “Murakami visual aesthetic”, as the majority of the artists in Murakami’s KaiKai Kiki collective all have a very similar “drawn-by-a-child-with-crayons” appeal (which is a drastic juxtaposition to Murakami’s mechanical like percision in his own works). However, do not confuse my use of the term “visual aesthetic” with Murakami’s superflat movement, which Koide’s work is undoubtedly apart of. Superflat (to me, at least) is more of a term for the movement or genre that Koide’s work is a part of; and to which predominantly all Japanese flattened anime-esque artworks are apart of. Gallery after the jump.
Showcasing the design process for his Inochi concept, Takashi Murakami held a showcase last night which revolved around his robotic figure, Inochi. Held at the Kaikai Kiki Gallery in Tokyo, the show was an amazing display of just how comprehensive Murakami’s exhibitions can be. Showcasing his creative prowess and marketing genius, Murakami previewed ads, videos, and artwork, all revolving around his latest work. Aside from the show, Takashi had a run of Inochi figures, hand signed with only 200 produced, halted due to quality control, although the Medicom produced sets could see a release in June 2009 with a price tag of $1,500 a pop.
