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Damien Hirst faces eight new claims of plagiarism | Art and design
A detail from Damien Hirst's In the Name of the Father which is claimed to be based on John LeKay's earlier This is My Body, This Is My Blood. Photograph: Jackdaw From formaldehyde-immersed sharks to diamond-encrusted skulls, Damien Hirst has become used to taking flak from traditionalists. Less than welcome have been the accusations of plagiarism, the latest of which were detailed today with claims that no fewer than 15 works produced over the years by the self-styled enfant terrible have been allegedly "inspired" by others. While Hirst has previously faced accusations that works including his diamond skull came from the imagination of other artists, the new allegations include his "crucified sheep", medicine cabinets, spin paintings, spot paintings, installation of a ball on an air-jet, his anatomical figure and cancer cell images.
Artist Alicia Martin's tornado of books shoot out a window like a burst of water from a giant hose. The Spain-based artist's sculptural installation at Casa de America, Madrid depicts a cavalcade of books streaming out of the side of a building. The whirlwind of literature defies gravity and draws attention with its grandeur size. There have been three site-specific installations, thus far, of the massive sculptural works in this series known as Biografias , translated as Biographies , that each feature approximately 5,000 books sprawled out around and atop one another.
5,000 Books Pour Out of a Building in Spain
Hisaji Hara – review | Art and design | The Observer
Hisaji Hara's A Study of 'The Salon', 2009. Photograph: Courtesy of the Michael Hoppen Gallery In 1949, Albert Camus provided an introductory essay for an exhibition of paintings by his friend, enigmatic Polish-French artist Balthus .
China's Cultural Revolution: portraits of accuser and accused | Art and design
No portrait is more important to Xu Weixin than his first. It was 1966; the artist was eight; and he had learned, to his shock, that his kindly young teacher was the daughter of a landlord – an enemy of the people. Outraged, he drew a hideous caricature and pinned it to the blackboard.
Few artists draw as well as Percy Kelly did. It's said he learned to hold a pencil before he could walk. His style is inimitable yet hard to define. He's a bit like Lowry without people (he almost never drew human figures), or a bit like Hockney without California (the furthest he ever went was Brittany). Comparisons might be made with other artists from the Lake District – Sheila Fell , for example, a near-contemporary of his. But a better analogy might be with the douanier Rousseau , not just because both worked in clerical positions for the state (in Kelly's case for the Post Office, from 1934 to 1958) but because both liked to say that nature was their only teacher.
Percy Kelly, the painter of hidden talent | Art and design
Where does art start? People were at it on pots long before they carried pigments into their caves at Lascaux. Migrations , a startlingly original show at Tate Britain , will open up all sorts of new ways of seeing art as migration, as a continual flowing in from somewhere else. Its migrant nature begins when you translate what you've seen into what you make.
Unstill lives: Tate Britain's Migrations exhibition | Art and design
Arts education defended by star-studded campaign | Education | The Observer
Actor Kevin Spacey is one of the leading names who have backed the ImagineNation report on the importance of arts subjects. Photograph: David Levene Kevin Spacey, Lord Puttnam, Nick Hornby and Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota are at the head of a concerted cultural backlash against government plans to concentrate the British schools ' curriculum on a core of "traditional" subjects.
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