Spotmania - 300 suckers sign up for 'The Challenge'
January 13 2012
Christina Ruiz, editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper, has bravely taken up the 'Complete Spot Challenge', which is to see all 11 Hirst Spot exhibitions in return for a free Spot print. Apparently 300 people have already signed up to do the same. Ruiz has written an excellent blogpost about her impending quest, which is well worth a read. Of her first Spot experience, in Gagosian's Britannia St. gallery in London, she writes:
There are 60 canvases here with spots ranging in size from 60 inches in diameter to just 3mm. One example from 1994, entitled Arginine Decarboxylase, sold at Christie’s in London for £881,250 last February, making it one of the more expensive spot paintings to sell at auction. To me it looks no different to the paintings on either side of it.
By the second room, the spot fatigue, and panic, start to set in.
I know how she feels - Christina, I wish you good luck. Still, a word of warning if you're one of those hoping to travel round the world pointlessly looking at the same thing: the 'Spot Challenge' rules state that;
Acceptance and use of the Spot Print constitutes permission (except where prohibited by law) to use your name, image, likeness, and photograph (all at the discretion of the Sponsor) for future advertising and publicity in any and all media now or hereafter devised throughout the world in perpetuity, without additional compensation, notification, or permission.
In other words, you have to trade a lifetime of shame for your poxy print.
