I find it interesting that a backlog of about 200 works by Damien Hirst can be news. He’s the closest thing we have to a Britney Spears in the art world, with the media looking for any excuse to publish a story on the man (I realize I do it too). All the art world needs now is some art celebrity sex tapes and some police mug shots of artists that have misbehaved. I would probably subscribe to an art gossip magazine if it was cheap.

Anyway, what was I talking about? I have the flu and I’m taking lots of evil tablets from big pharmaceutical companies, so sticking to the point can be challenging.

The Times Online has reported on Hirst’s “mountainous backlog” of more than 200 works by the artist and his production line sitting in the White Cube gallery in London.

“The items include 34 butterfly paintings dating back to 2005; six medicine cabinets with price tags of up to £2.5m and a batch of 25 fly and resin coated skulls. The “Hirst mountain” held by the White Cube gallery, and detailed in next month’s issue of The Art Newspaper, shows the challenges of selling mass-produced art.” Times Online

In a later Bloomberg report, White Cube’s Jay Jopling said that their stock level for Hirst was normal and the gallery is NOT sitting on a “mountain” of Hirst works.

Jopling said “The appetite for Damien’s art is such that we never have enough and I’m always keen to have as much work on consignment as possible. The market for Hirst was strong and suggestions to the contrary were based on redundant documents.”

It’ll be interesting to see how much more we hear of Damien Hirst as his big auction at Sotheby’s draws closer. I’ll be disappointed if it doesn’t make the 6 o’clock news.

Update: There’s an interesting Damien Hirst interview (video) with Tim Marlow on the Sotheby’s website here.
>> Damien Hirst News

One of Australia’s most interesting painters was an old Aboriginal woman that didn’t start painting until she was about 70 and wouldn’t know a Rembrandt from a Rothko, but she painted like an angel. Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910-1996) only painted for a short time but was very prolific, pumping out around 3000 paintings in eight short years.

The genius of the old woman from the remote desert community of Utopia, in the Northern Territory of Australia is starting to be acknowledged at auction with her 1995 work “Earth’s Creation” selling for more than a million dollars in 2007.

“Emily Kngwarreye’s paintings are a response to the land and the spiritual forces which imbue it; the contours and formations of the landscape, climatic changes, the parched earth and flooding rains, the shapes and patterns of seeds and plants.” From a biography of Emily Kngwarreye at the National Gallery of Australia

The Exhibition “Utopia: The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye” has recently been to Japan at the National Museum of Art in Osaka and The National Art Centre in Tokyo, where 120 works by Kngwarreye were on display. The exhibition will now go on show at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra until the 12th of October 2008. Which means that I might have to reward myself with a roadtrip, a few nights in a nice hotel, and a ticket to an exhibition. I may have to pop over to the National Gallery of Australia while I’m in Canberra and say hello to DeKooning’s ugly Woman V, Pollock’s big Blue Poles, an Anselm Kiefer, and Freud’s tribute to Cezanne.

Click on Kngwarreye paintings below for bigger versions..

Emily Kame Kngwarreye – Big Yam Dreaming 1995
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas – Approx 291 x 801 cm

Emily Kame Kngwarreye – The Alhalkere Suite 1993
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas – 22 Panels Approx 120 x 90 cm each

Emily Kame Kngwarreye – Earth’s Creation 1994
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas – 4 Panels Approx 275 x 160 cm each