Less than one-third of Damien Hirst’s current art exhibition is for sale, but the blockbuster Brit will make millions anyway, as his revived series of candy-colored spot paintings are shown at all eleven Gagosian galleries around the world (until February 18). Of about 200 works, Hirst painted five himself; his army of assistants knocked out the rest.
Meanwhile, legendary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (another Gagosian goody), who in 1967 painted nude bodies with polka dots in public, has re-worked one of her old colored dot projects, too. Her new installation “The Obliteration Room” at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in South Brisbane, Australia is a fully furnished room (sofas, dining room table, even a parlor piano) painted entirely white, but it’s always a work in progress. Visitors (kids in particular) are handed colored dot stickers and encouraged to put them wherever they wish, creating a crowd-sourced swarm of color. Kusama’s thereby assembled the smallest staff of assistants in the art world, literally!