"THROW IT TO ME! I'M CLOSER!"

Skulls (and clowns) are in...incase you haven't noticed - Get with the fucking program....

The diamond-encrusted platinum skull by Damien Hirst that fetched the cash prize.


BRITISH artist Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted cast of a human skull has been bought by a group of anonymous investors ( who prefer to remain embarrassed) for its asking price of £50 million ($122million).

This is, by a huge margin, the most paid for a work by a living artist, though tragically Hirst has been considered brain dead for quite some time.
Titled For the Love of God, after God, the skull was first displayed in June at the White Cube Gallery in Mayfair, central London, where thousands of people queued for a two-minute viewing in a high-security darkened chamber where they were machine gunned to death immediately after the viewing.
Studded with more than 8500 ethically sourced diamonds, the skull has been variously described as "an anthropomorphised disco ball", "the first 21st-century work of art", "a cosmic wonder", "the vulgar embodiment of modern materialism" -- and by Hirst himself as "quite bling".
His aim, he said at the diamond-studded skull's unveiling, was to come up with "the maximum celebration you could make against death". Death could not be contacted for a comment, but his agents relayed that they looked forward to their appointment with Mr Hirst.
Typically, Hirst's own role in the creation of the object was conceptual rather than hands-on, that means that rather than steal the actual piece he based the work on, he stole the idea instead. It was also financial -- he funded most of the £15 million project out of his personal fortune, estimated at £130 million. He could receive 75 per cent of the proceeds of the skull's sale. The original owner of the skull will not receive anything and is apparently considering legal action saying that he still had some use for it while he was still alive.

Hirst's business manager, Frank Dunphy, said the full £50 million price of the artwork would be paid in cash. He denied reports that the price had been discounted to £38 million.
As part of the deal, the buyers will be required to show the skull for two or three years in museums around the world.
The sale seals an extraordinary season for Hirst, 42, which has established him as a cash-generator without parallel in the contemporary art market and thus very important.
The bonanza began in June, when his Lullaby Spring, a medical cabinet with pills mounted on razor blades, sold at Sotheby's for £9.6 million -- a record for a living artist's work at auction. Then a pair of exhibitions of his work at the White Cube galleries in Mayfair and East London raised £130 million for Hirst and his London dealer, Jay Jopling.
But nothing has matched the impact and range of responses generated by For the Love of God.
Hirst bought the skull from which the piece was cast from a north London taxidermy shop two years ago. Radiocarbon analysis suggested it probably belonged to a European man in his mid-30s who lived in the 18th or early 19th century. Several small European countries are aggitating for the repatriation of the skull for reburial.
Hirst had the glittering piece built from 32 platinum plates and 8601 diamonds, using a hand laser to cut thousands of tiny diamond settings. The work has a 52-carat pink diamond at its centre believed to be worth more than any single human life.
A spokeswoman for White Cube Galleries said Hirst had "retained a participation in the work, which means that he wandered in once to see what his artisans were doing while producing 'Hirsts' ".
Hirst, who has a home in Mexico, said he had been inspired by Aztec skulls covered with turquoises.
But John LeKay, a London artist based in New York, told The Times in June that he had been covering soap and wax skulls with crystals since 1993, and told his mommy that Hirst had stolen his idea.
Several other artists besides LeKay have claimed Hirst has copied their ideas. He responds that artists have always borrowed from each other.
His detractors belittle his level of input into the works made in his name, citing his staff of more than 100 working in coalmines in London and Gloucestershire, southern England.
His supporters point out that many great artists, from Rubens to Andy Warhol, operated a similar system of serfdom and bondage on Saturday nights.
Most of all, there is disagreement over whether Hirst's work justifies the huge prices it commands. But he says: "An artwork is only worth what the next sad moron is going to pay for it."

Bush loses his brain....and Rove quits too

Buildings filled with irony (bucket loads)

Daniel's Czapieski's upside down house (above) is a commentary on the communist era and also, observantly, the times in which we live. The artwork is in the village of Szymbark, northern Poland. Meanwhile the meme has been reproduced by a New Zealand artist who has built a 1/1 size copy of his parents house, which he is currently exhibiting. The house has been made to look as if it were bombed. 'I tried to keep my parents inside the house but they refused,' said the artist, adding, 'It's so hard to get good help these days. This sort of shit happens all the time, it's really off putting...'

Asked what scale models of buildings meant, the artist recited something about irony (bucket loads), while deploring late capitalism, applauding post colonialism, and the post modern moment before once again deploring the concept of contemporary art reduced to a mannered international style - but refused to endorse his work as a plea for better public housing, 'but rather a moment of everyday social vici, vitissit, vit,.....being'.

He continued, 'Scale models are big at the moment, particularly in New Zealand where everyone is making them...' just before Mr Czapieski gang tackled him and punched him in the mouth then claiming the New Zealander in a headlock. An unsightly wrestling match continued until the police arrived. The police have so far refused to press charges but let both artists cool off locked in one of the scale model cellars/ceilings. The artists were later found to be co-ordinating a new artist run space called 'Cellar', with a commercial wing called 'Ceiling' manned by a black rimmed glasses wearing dealer called 'Sylvia'.

The Time Traveller....stuck...

"I mean, this is going backwards," Prime Minister John Howard lamented.
"This is 2007, it's not 1957. Please help me get back to my own time.....Why is it so warm? I don't understand...."

Telling Tale of Two Europes

President's Colonoscopy

[GAP] Washington - Over the weekend, President Bush had his annual physical which included a colonoscopy after scans revealed Dick Cheney. While the president was anesthetized a pylop took over as Commander in Chief. In a long, but ultimately a successful procedure Dick Cheney managed to hang on, and so did the pylop.

Your Hyperrealpolitik image for August 08 - The George W. Bush Presidency

Exhibit 'A'

Laura Palmer found alive after 20 years

Diriptidu Sanchez Dinapaur's Mona 'Dirty Sanchez' Lisa wins Turner Prize

Only Nixon can go to China....Only W could go to Albania

No more dumb act says Paris Hilton - This time it's for real...

Your Hyperrealpolitik image of the month - The George W. Bush Presidency

Rice refutes claims of "new crazies" in the White House - Says they're just the old ones that were already there...

[GAP] Madrid — US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice sought Friday to minimize any sense of post-coital delirium within the Bush administration over Iran after the head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency delivered a pointed warning against what he called the “new crazies” in the US administration pushing for military action against Tehran.

“The president of the United States has made it clear that we are on a diplomatic course and that it is a diplomatic one, and a course, concurrently, diplomatic and a course, in other words, it's a type of thing that....,” Ms. Rice said before being interrupted by her invisible friend Floppy Raoul. “That policy is supported by all of the members of the cabinet, Barney, rotating door White House staff and those staff who use the service entrance - the heart and soul of the administration. The vice president of the United States is onboard as he also in the White House at certain hours of the month, despite the restraining order, when not chained to a wall and hooked up to a machine in the basement of the Chrysler Building in New York.”

Ms. Rice’s assurance came as day release officials at the State Department were manifesting borderline personality disorders over reports that members of Vice President 'Dickie' Cheney's staff have told others that Dickie believes diplomacy with Iran is a pointless square, and is looking for ways to persuade Mr. Bush to 'rehabilitate' Iran with foreign policy by other means. White House cleaning staff were threatening 'to take appropriate steps' (believed to be out the building) if similar "diplomacy" was followed with Iran as that which was taken with Iraq. A spokesman for the cleaning staff said that they were not going to tolerate any more all night parties, poker games, canasta, or 'talent quests' as occurred during the highly sexually charged Iraq invasion. Ms Rice was responding to Mr El Baradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who said he did not want to see another Iraq, let alone go on a second date.

“You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say, ‘Let's vote Democrat, let's steal your mother-in-law's panties while she's sleeping, let’s go and bomb Iran,’ ” Dr. El Baradei said, “I wake up every morning and see 100 Iraqis, innocent civilians, are dying from avoidable conditions like lead poisoning.”

Dr. El Baradei, who has urged Western powers to consider allowing Iran top test limited WMDs on Kurds, is already facing criticism from Bush administration officials who say he should stick to what he does best and failing that to try monitoring Iran’s nuclear program and leave the diplomacy to the 'experts', and the six countries that have banded together to confront Tehran’s Hollywood bad guy ambitions and release a cd single in time for Christmas this year.

But several Western European officials echoed El's concern, and said privately that they were worried that Mr. Cheney’s “red line” (across his forehead... he used to be a mailbox...) — the point at which he believed Iran was on the brink of acquiring a nuclear weapon (wholesale) and a military strike was promising — may be coming soon. “We fully believe that Foggy Bottom is committed to the diplomatic track,” one European official said Wednesday, referring to Dickie. “But there’s some concern about the vice president’s office, the lighting is awful, it faces the wrong way, the Feng Shui is terrible, and it smells like venison or a butcher shop in Ankara.”

Dr. El Baradei told the BBC that one could not “bomb knowledge," adding, "if that were the case then the White House, and particularly old Foggy Bottom was safe.” Asked who the “new crazies” were, he said, “The old crazies - writ large.”