Damien Hirst's feud with teenage street artist Cartrain could yet become the most controversial story of Hirst's career. It really is vile for a rich man to use his power to bully someone who, after all, is just trying to emulate him by making art with found materials.
Presumably, what irks Hirst is that Cartrain used Hirst's diamond skull in a series of collaged portraits of the skull's creator. Hirst successfully demanded that all the young artist's works incorporating the diamond skull should be handed over, presumably to be destroyed.
But I can report that not every Cartrain collage featuring Hirst's skull has been seized. One exists and is in the public domain. I am its proud owner, having been given it by the artist. Here is a portrait for our time.
It catches Hirst in middle age perfectly, does it not? I particularly like the NHS spectacles, a cruel reference to Hirst's geeky specs. The Blue Peter badge is another hilarious touch.
Seriously – this is an excellent dadaist collage that makes a lot of "official" contemporary art look pretentious. I thought this when I chanced on a Hirst portrait that Cartrain infiltrated into the National Portrait Gallery last year, and I think it even more looking at this image. I wonder if the real reason for Hirst's antagonism is that Cartrain has done the same as all great caricaturists down the ages: created a vicious but insidiously memorable image of his target.
Anyway, it exists, free and unfettered. Hirst's lawyers cannot have this one.
