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From The Times

June 27, 2007

My old friend Damien stole my skull idea

Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent

Damien Hirst has been accused of copying yet another artist’s ideas.

Three weeks after the artist unveiled his diamond-encrusted skull with a price of £50 million, another artist, John LeKay, has told The Times that he has been producing similar jewel-encrusted skulls since 1993 (see image 2, left). He also believes that it is not the only one of his ideas that Hirst has used in some way.

LeKay, who claims to have been a friend of Hirst’s between 1992 and 1994, and who shared a mixed show with him in New York in 1994, said of the diamond skull: “When I heard he was doing it, I felt like I was being punched in the gut. When I saw the image online, I felt that a part of me was in the piece. I was a bit shocked.”

LeKay, a 46-year-old Londoner who lives in New York, created 25 of the skulls in 1993. Inspired by Mayan skulls, he used crystal to make his skull glisten. “When the light hits it, it looks as if it is covered in diamonds,” he said.

Over the years, he has explored the idea repeatedly, covering skulls made of soap and wax with artificial diamonds and Swarovski crystals.

He said: “I would like Damien to acknowledge that ‘John really did inspire the skull and influenced my work a lot’. Damien’s very insecure about his originality. He used to say, ‘You’re a better artist than me’.

“He can be affectionate and is fun to be around, but he struggles to come up with ideas. It takes years of work to develop something. My stuff with crystals took a lot of research. You don’t just get there. He’s impatient. He’s a lazy artist.”

While Hirst is still looking for a buyer with £50 million to spare, LeKay’s skulls have sold for less than $2,500 (£1.200).

Last week Hirst’s Lullaby Spring – a medicine chest that would be mistaken for just that if placed anywhere other than an auction house or art gallery – changed hands for £9.6 million at Sotheby’s, making him the world’s most expensive living artist.

Hirst made his name by pickling a shark, then won the Turner Prize in 1995 with an exhibition that included Mother and Child, Divided – the severed halves of a cow and calf preserved in formaldehyde. LeKay claims that Hirst took such ideas from science education products sold by Carolina Biological Supply Company.

“I gave Damien a marked-up duplicate copy of the catalogue,” he said. “You have no idea how much he got from this catalogue. The Cow Divided is on page 647 – it is a model of a cow divided down the centre, like his piece. I gave him the catalogue to help him find butterflies.”

The similarity between Hirst’s diamond skull, For the Love of God, and skull-themed jewellery with Swarovski crystals produced by Butler and Wilson was reported earlier this month, but Hirst is no stranger to plagiarism claims.

Last year Robert Dixon, a graphics artist, said that Hirst’s print Valium bore unmistakable similarities to one of his circular designs on page 74 of The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry, published in 1991.

He claimed that when he initially contacted Hirst in 2003 he was taken aback by the e-mail response from the artist’s manager. Apparently unaware of Mr Dixon’s involvement with it, the manager said that Hirst had drawn inspiration from a book given to him by a friend – The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry.

Mr Dixon told The Times: “So Hirst’s manager wrote back to say the drawing was ‘nothing to do with you’, not realising that it was.”

Neither Hirst’s office, Science, nor his dealer, the White Cube, wished to comment yesterday.

Inspired

— Norman Emms, who designed a £14.99 plastic anatomical toy that was reproduced as a £1 million, 20ft bronze torso by Hirst, later received a “goodwill payment” from the artist

— The Stuckists, a group campaigning for traditional artistry, displayed a shark that hung in a London shop window two years before Hirst’s work was first shown

— The actor Keith Allen said that the theatre director Sir Trevor Nunn paid £27,000 for a Hirst painting that had been done by Hirst’s two-year-old son and Allen’s ten-year-old son

Source: Times database

Finding it incredibly difficult to use the word artist in my comment.
I may be mistaken but my understanding is that Hirst rarely actually lays a hand on any of his supposed works of art. Where is the massive regognition of the technicians and professionals employed in creating a "Hirst".( and whats their cut of the Â£50 million)
That is unless of course Damien Hirst himself sat for hour upon hour painstakingly positioning each stone onto the skull.

D B Hepburn, Aberdeen, Scotland

Yeah, but - it's not a very good idea in the first place is it? How long did it take you to think it up?

The comedy value of this scandal is that in a few years time a Damien Hirst work will be worth its true value: zero.

Jack Bloxam, Edinburgh,

And here's one I made earlier. Where is the art world moving too when the use of materials that are already in existence can be valued at 50K. Both the skull and the diamonds were not created by the artist. The concept and fixing of the two materials I assume are. Now where did I leave that plastic gardening can perhaps if I stick some silk flowers on it, may be the white cube will interested in it.

Paul Thomas, Limassol, Cyprus

Well I think the inspiration came from "Accesorize" or somewhere like that because my daughter has a brooch just like Mr Hirst's original piece of artwork although I'll admit it is smaller and not encrusted in real diamonds. But it is the idea that counts.

Elke, Frankfurt, Germany

He's never lost control. You're face to face with the man who sold the world. Hirst is the death of British Artistry, the rise of Con-artistry.

Timmy Harris, colchester,

I thought every Tom, Dick and Harry knew Damien Hirst represented the current climate: Greed and flash in the pan fame. If you can put it on the front of a magazine and it sells, then it must be good.

Middle class excuses for their failings and their inability to formulate anything original or interesting is ok now, as "high" culture is also microwaveably instant.

People are lazy and artists know that.
If it's pretty, shiny, expensive and a "bit deep because it talks about death(ooooh)" , then it's going to sell. Well done Mr .Hirst. I genuinely hail him as one of the best....

(though I'd like to remind you that an Italian History of Art Uni friend didn't know or care who Hirst or Emin were...)

Saki Baba, London,

There was a much more interesting artist online,and in the San Jose California Museum,who was a mental patient in the nearby mental institution, most of his life,a Mexican migrant worker.In the institution, he did marvelous original paintings,during the 40's. He had no training at all,and was semi-illiterate. He never got a penny for his paintings,and he is now known to be a genius. I recommend that you look this person's artwork up,at that museum,and he is worth your time a lot more. Thanks!

D. H. Bucher, Eugene, Oregon, USA

I enjoy some of the artists works however this latest work does not appeal to me it is about wealth and greed maybe the artist should donate it to the British museum somehow i doubt it he will wait until someone who is awash with money decides to buy it and lock it away for the next decade or so. Art is meant to be enjoyed!!!

oswald cassidy, koh phangan suratthani , Thailand

Chris Liverpool: I have seen the Hirst skull and it looks interesting ,however the diamond concoction on the forehead ruins it in my humble opinion.It looks indeed odd and out of place but I suppose they wanted to use some large diamonds and that was the only place where they could put them prominently. The display was also hindered by the use of a square protective cover which produced bad shadows. If they had used a domed cover than they might have eliminated that problem.

Adrian, ondon,

The real problem, in my opinion, is that the work of Damien Hirst is fundamentally sterile and dull anyway.
His status as an artist is almost entirely due to media hysteria and manipulation. Unfortunately, he didn't think of this method himself either; Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols rode that particular shock wave into the money back in 1976.
All of these arguments about Hirst and his ilk just further serve to alienate the public from art. It reinforces the "Emperor's New Clothes" syndrome that has allowed an elite of rich fools to be completely conned into thinking they know/appreciate something us common mortals don't, and a cadre of talentless chancers to get very rich off the back of it.
Pitiful and pointless.
Unfortunately, the Stuckist's stance just reinforces this lunacy by constantly pointing at it!

Nigel Adams, Rochester, UK

...is it just the photos or is the large diamond on the skulls forhead wonky?

chris, liverpool,

"The actor Keith Allen said that the theatre director Sir Trevor Nunn paid Â£27,000 for a Hirst painting that had been done by Hirstâ€™s two-year-old son and Allenâ€™s ten-year-old son"

whats it worth now....

chris, liverpool,

This is where and how you get stretched as an artist. Move on bro. You can live in bitterness your whole life or you can create something killer that takes it up one notch.

Joby Harris, Los Angeles, California

Damian Hurst's real skill is in orchestrating and manipulating the propoganda machine, there is really only a mere particle of Art involved in his work and particularly as he does not effect it himself,there is only the sensation which acts as the sizzle to power the sale of such conceptual pieces, wrongly labelled as Art. The advent of this so called conceptual art was packaged and promoted in the UK by the clever Mr Sacchi, a past master of advertising and the ultimate manipulator of the media machine. He purveyed conceptual art, as desirable, respectable and more importantly as a worthy financial investment for the less artistically aware and more gullable members of the wealthier classes who longed for some object to make them seem enlightened and different from their peers.
Sacchi did an incredible job of promoting this kind of non-art and is responsible for the hedenistic folly of materially blatant
posers, like Hirst and the dire drivelled offerings of Ms Emin .t

Sebastian Cloud, Paris , France

The problem is not here, in the copy or whatever. So many artists who arrive to the top of the market (their main objective) act like that. People who put money in their work buy only a name (or 2: the one of the artist, the one of the gallery). What is surely a problem is the announced price for this Hirst's skull by his gallery White Cube: Â£50 million! If the artist and his gallerist decided to use this money (and their names) for a good cause, that woud be honnest. It seems it's not the case and that's surely THE WORST SHAME FOR ART.

Evelyne Jouanno, San Francisco, CA

I think this is an amazing piece of modern contemperary art. It is nothing like the other skull in image two. Hirst creation is much more defined as a skull and is much more art than the other one. I know if i had 50 million to spare i would certainly buy it.

Dean Rowland, 17, ST Albans, Herts

Each work of art is unique and has to make it or break it on its own. Artistic inspiration comes from all that an artist is and all that he has been and incloses and folds into an endless series of psychic frames everything that he has experienced. Picasso used an numerous reference points for inspiratation. Warhol used other peoples photographs as well as his own. Reality is always morphing and bendable, twistable and makeable..That Damien Hirst has sourced the whole of his experience in developing his art is not only normal but is to be expected and it is also a play on modernity.

Ken C. Arnold, Santa Monica , ca

I think Damien took inspiration from Nicola Bolla and his Skull too:

http://www.speronewestwater.com/cgi-bin/iowa/works/record.html?record=2388&large=1

oh Damien Damien Damien you did it again!

Margherita, Roma, Italy

As a writer it would be a very sad day for us if we could not use the same themes as other authors to create our own work. there is no copyright on ideas, only on how we express them - in words, on the canvass, as a diamond studded skull. Hurst has created something beautiful, and if anyone can claim to hold the copyright, is is the Aztecs and their carved rock crystal skulls which were made hundreds of years ago.

swing swang, Basingstoke, Hants.

The LeKay skull was created some 14 years ago based on
an ancient Mayan crystal skull. LeKay carved the skull out of Paradichlorobenzene a white crystalline substance that is formulated by the chlorination of benzene,commonly used as a deodorizer in urinal cakes and closet fresheners. It is a perpetually changing sculpture because the crystals disappear and reappear, forever changing shape. I believe LeKay was using this as a metaphor for the growth of the human soul, and the after life, whatever his reasoning the effect is moving. Damien Hirst 's diamond skull was clearly inspired by the LeKay, but does not manage to achieve anywhere near the same depth ,even though it is dripping in Â£14m worth of flawless diamonds. Perhaps it would have been more instructive of Mr. Hirst to have titled his work "You can't take it with you"

Dee, Briar Cliff Manor, New York

Hearing and experiencing cases such as artist plagarism is sickening and discouraging. Discouraging in the sense that this is the field that we work in and there are people eating up these so called "artist". I truly hope that these cases reach the wide public and black list these artist. And the comment about the blood diamond ecrusted skull is a good one. I guess we'll all have to start placing copyrights on our pieces so that sad excuses for artists such as Damien Hirst do not keep banking off others ideas.

Brandon, Hazelwood, Missouri

I think you've missed the point of Damian's diamond skull and what it represents. Look beyond the obvious and think about what this piece of work demonstrates about man and his dreams and what we are prepared to do to achieve them.

For example: the value we place on objects of desire, the way we view and behave around death - hiding/denying/fearing/worshipping - and our fantasies about afterlife .

People may well have worked and even died in terrible conditions digging up diamonds but the fact is that we still place high value on them and this work highlights that fact.

In short it is a conceptual piece of art that stimulates thought.

Looking at the two photographs I would say that Damian's execution has more impact and the orginal inspiration for LeKay's earlier work could hardly be described as original.

Maggi, London, UK

In all the hype over Mr. Hirst's diamond encrusted skull, I have yet to see any mention of the the murderous diamond mining industry. how many extremely poor people and their families had to suffer in order for Mr. Hirst to hire someone to fashion his "artwork?" The distance between the wealthy and the poor grows wider every day; so much so that the poor have fallen completely from sight. Mr. Hirst's piece is an obscenity. The rest of his oeuvre is simply showmanship.

Tim McDonald, Framingham, MA, USA

I'm surprised that no one seems to have bothered to research the Fine Arts Dept at Goldsmith's College during the period that Hirst was there. If you did, you'd find that the skills it taught were nothing to do with the techniques of painting and sculpture; instead, they focused on marketing and promotion - how to sell the 'idea' of art.. That's why Hirst was such a good fit with Charles Saatchi: they were both in the same business, and both understood exactly how their collaboration could make them both wealthy and influential. incidentally, originality has very little to do with art - it certainly isn't essential.

ScottQ, Boise, Idaho / USA

While conceptually these two artworks could be said to hold a great deal in common, the execution and end results are clearly seperate. I understand entirely that Mr LeKay would appreciate some recognition for the conceptual inspiration that Damien Hurst appears to have taken from his work. However I do not believe that in this case LeKay can argue any greater influence than that of planting a 'shiney skull' notion in Damien Hurst's head.

Use of the human skull as artistic material is a very old one, so Hurst may well feel the odd pang of anxiety with regard to the originality of his work. Personally, I find Hurst's execution of the skull concept a little vacuous. The concept smacks of something drawn more from the financial capability to cover a skull in diamonds, 'because I can', rather than employing any great creative artistry or craftsmanship to evoke an emotional response fro the viewer. Compared to the tremendous craft involved in 'true' sculpture this is a little tame.

Jonathan Eccles, London,

I have no doubt about the plagiarism in this or much of what Mr Hirst produces. It's one thing to be inspired by or to pay homage to but the 'work' that Hirst produces seems nothing short of 'copying to see if I can get away with it'. But surely it shows the power of hype and marketing that he is seen as a King rather than the Emperor with ever changing attire. I would love to have seen his and Kieth Allen's face when Nunn paid all that money for their children's artwork! All Hail the Emperor and his laughing loyal servant!

Tony Oliver, Dorchester, Dorset

A skull is a relic, a part of the body of someone that once lived, who has died, and I can't see why anyone would want to encrust it with anything!

T. Bishop, London, UK

I'm sorry, I totally fail to see the similarity between those skulls. It's like saying you're not allowed to sell apples because I'm already selling cherries.

starling, Lancaster,

Has anyone else noticed that skull bears an uncanny resemblance to the one used in the opening credits of the television series Rome?

Paul Ritchie, Southampton,