Paint it black, Stones writer pens artist Damien Hirst's dark taleControversial artist Damien Hirst has signed up Rolling Stone
Keith Richards' ghost-writer to work on his autobiography.
The book, due to be published by Viking Penguin next year,
will follow Bristol-born Hirst's rise to fame which has seen
him become of the country's wealthiest artists.
He said: "I'm really pleased to be working with Penguin on my
autobiography. They are a very cool and creative publisher with
a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm. They care about all their
readers from top to bottom and are not afraid of pushing the boundaries."
Co-writer James Fox, who worked with Richards on his 2010 best-seller
Life, said: "This promises to be a fascinating story, as told with
Hirst's witty style.
As well as the well-known arc of the rebel who took on the
art establishment, it will include a barely known first act –
a black and hilarious account of Hirst's youth, growing up in
a semi-criminal, often violent milieu, while sharing with his
friends an unlikely passion for art.
Publisher Venetia Butterfield said the book would be a "momentous
publishing event" and the firm hopes it will repeat the recent
success of Morrissey's memoirs, which proved a surprise best-seller.
Hirst, who won the Turner Prize in 1995, rose to fame as part of a
group known as the Young British Artists and is probably best known
for a series of works in which he preserved animals, including a shark
and a sheep, in formaldehyde.
His more recent works include Verity, a 66ft (20m) bronze-plated
statue of a pregnant, naked woman wielding a sword, unveiled at
Ilfracombe harbour in north Devon, near his home.
A solo show at Tate Modern in London in 2012 was the most popular
in the gallery's history, with around 463,000 visitors queuing to
see exhibits including a diamond-encrusted human skull called For
The Love Of God.
Other highlights of the show, seen by an average of almost 3,000
visitors a day, were A Thousand Years 1990 where flies emerge from
maggots, eat from a rotting cow's head and die, and The Physical
Impossibility Of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living where a shark is suspended in formaldehyde.
Hirst's commercial success is not always matched by critical acclaim
and he has faced criticism from other artists, including fellow Turner
Prize winner Grayson Perry, who said his work was "hackneyed" and
"tatty". The transvestite potter said the "phenomenally successful"
Hirst played "a good game".
ROCKMAN