Damien Hirst in vicious feud with teenage artist over a box of pencils
Millionaire gets young rival banned from galleries after taking exception to prank played on him
By Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent
Friday, 4 September 2009
Damien Hirst objected to pencils being taken from his work, Pharmacy
How much is a box of pencils worth? Fifty pence? £3.99 if the pencils have rubbers on the ends? Well, if they're part of a Damien Hirst art installation, the value is £500,000. That is what 17-year-old graffiti artist Cartrain discovered when he pilfered some pencils from Hirst's sculpture Pharmacy. And that wasn't all – he was arrested, released on bail, and is waiting to find out if he will be formally charged with causing damage to an iconic artwork worth £10m.
When Cartrain walked into Tate Britain and made off with a few HBs in July, he believed it was a harmless game of tit-for-tat as part of an ongoing feud. He originally locked horns with the millionaire artist last year, when he used an image of Hirst's famous diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God, to create collages that were put up for sale on an art website.
Hirst reported him to the Design and Artists Copyright Society and a string of legal letters were sent to Cartrain's art dealer, Tom Cuthbert, at 100artworks.com, about the teenager's pieces, also called For the Love of God. The online gallery surrendered them to Hirst with a verbal apology.
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