Saturday, September 27, 2008

Hirst snaps up Paris Hilton picture

Damien Hirst has spent a slice of his new fortune on a portrait of Paris Hilton made from images taken from porn magazines.

A two-day auction of the controversial artist's work fetched an unprecedented £111 million at Sotheby's earlier this month, boosting Hirst's vast wealth.

The sale, entitled Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, featured Hirst's butterfly paintings and trademark animal corpses in tanks of formaldehyde.

On Thursday, the British artist paid an undisclosed amount for a "homage" to US heiress Hilton - made from images ripped from porn magazines.

The collage, entitled Paris, 2008, was created by Jonathan Yeo, who has painted conventional portraits of Tony Blair, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Rupert Murdoch and Prince Philip.

His official portrait of Tony Blair was dominated by a Remembrance Day poppy -- a symbol of the many wars fought while he was prime minister.

He was inspired to make his first porn collage after the White House cancelled a commission to paint George Bush in 2004.

Annoyed, he decided to embark on a portrait of the US President anyway, but using pieces of pornographic magazines.

Yeo, the son of the former Conservative minister Tim, is showing his work in New York in the Lazarides Gallery.

Hirst gave some of the proceeds from the record-breaking £111 million art auction to charity. Hilton's fame was boosted by the leak of a sex tape, entitled One Night in Paris, starring the celebrity.

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