Jake and Dinos Chapman

Jake Chapman (born 1966) and Dinos Chapman (born 1962) are brothers and English conceptual artists, known as the Chapman Brothers, who work almost exclusively in collaboration with each other. They came to prominence as part of the Young British Artists movement promoted by Charles Saatchi.

Artworks

Jake Chapman was born in Cheltenham and Dinos Chapman in London. Their father was a British art teacher and their mother an orthodox Greek Cypriot. They were brought up in Cheltenham but moved to Hastings where they attended a local comprehensive before attending the University of East London's Art college - then at Greengate House, Plaistow - and then enrolling at The Royal College of Art, when they worked as assistants to the artists Gilbert and George. They began their own collaboration in 1992. The brothers have often made pieces with plastic models or fibreglass mannequins of people. An early piece consisted of eighty-three scenes of torture and disfigurement similar to those recorded by Francisco Goya in his series of etchings, Disasters of War (a work they later returned to) rendered into small three-dimensional plastic models. One of these was later turned into a life-size work, Great Deeds Against the Dead, shown along with Zygotic Acceleration, Biogenetic, De-Sublimated Libidinal Model (Enlarged x 1000) at the Sensation exhibition in 1997.

The Chapman brothers continued the theme of anatomical and pornographic grotesque with a series of mannequins of children, sometimes fused together, with genitalia in place of facial features. Their sculpture Hell (2000) consisted of a large number of miniature figures of Nazis arranged in nine glass cases laid out in the shape of a swastika. In 2003 with a series of works named Insult to Injury, they altered a set of Goya's etchings by adding funny faces. As a protest against this piece, Aaron Barschak (who later became famous for gate-crashing Prince William's 21st birthday party dressed as Osama bin Laden in a frock) threw a pot of red paint over Jake Chapman during a talk he was giving in May 2003. The Chapmans' oeuvre has also referenced work by William Blake, Auguste Rodin and Nicolas Poussin. Jake Chapman has published a number of catalogue essays and pieces of art criticism in his own right, as well as a book, Meatphysics, published by Creation Books in 2003. The brothers have also designed a label for Becks beer as part of a series of limited edition labels produced by contemporary artists. Using a title from the Tim Burton film, in 2004 they curated A Nightmare Before Christmas as part of the occasional All Tomorrow's Parties music festival at Camber Sands.

Jake and Dinos Chapman. Death, 2003, in the Turner Prize.

The Chapman brothers were nominated for the Turner Prize in 2003. As well as including Insult to Injury, their Turner Prize exhibit debuted two new works Sex and Death. Sex directly referenced their previous work Great Deeds against the Dead. The original work shows three dismembered corpses hanging from a tree, Sex shows the same scenario, but in a heightened state of decay. Additionally clown's noses are now present on the skulls of the corpses; snakes, rats and insects (like those found in joke shops) cover the piece. Death is two sex dolls, placed on top of each other, head-to-toe in the 69 sex position: despite appearing to be made of plastic it is in fact cast in bronze and painted to look like plastic. On 24 May 2004, a fire in a storage warehouse destroyed many works from the Saatchi collection including Hell. The brothers subsequently made a very similar, though more extensive, work called Fucking Hell.

In 2007, they were criticised by journalist Johann Hari for adopting an anti-Enlightenment philosophy, and for Jake Chapman saying that the boys who murdered Liverpool toddler James Bulger performed "a good social service"^[1]. Jake Chapman responded by calling Johann Hari "fat-faced ugly [and] four-eyed" and "a fascist", and claimed the Bulger quote and others had been "stripped from the serious debate in which they belong"^[2].

It was announced in December 2007 that the brothers would play Big Brother during 2008's Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack.^[3] They had to pull out for undisclosed reasons.

In May 2008 the White Cube gallery exhibited 13 apparently authenticated watercolours painted by Adolf Hitler, to which the brothers have added hippie motifs.^[4] Jake Chapman described most of the dictator's works as 'awful landscapes' which they had 'prettified'.^[5] Also included in the exhibition was Fucking Hell, the (somewhat altered) remake of Hell, and a series of doctored eighteenth and nineteenth century-style aristocratic portraits in oils.^[6]

Modern Art Oxford solo show (2003)

From April - June 2003, Jake and Dinos Chapman held a solo show at Modern Art Oxford entitled The Rape of Creativity in which "the enfants terribles of Britart, bought a mint collection of Goya's most celebrated prints - and set about systematically defacing them"^[7] The Francisco Goya prints were his Disasters of War set of 80 etchings.^[7] The duo named their newly defaced works Insult to Injury.^[7] BBC described more of the exhibition's art: "Drawings of mutant Ronald McDonalds, a bronze sculpture of a painting showing a sad-faced Hitler in clown make-up and a major installation featuring a knackered old caravan and fake dog turds."^[8] Whilst The Daily Telegraph commented that the Chapman brothers had "managed to raise the hackles of art historians by violating something much more sacred to the art world than the human body - another work of art",^[9] whilst commenting that the effect of their work was powerful.^[9]

Personal Lives

Jake Chapman married model Rosemary Ferguson in Christ Church, Spitalfields, London in 2004. Guests at the wedding included Kate Moss, Sadie Frost, musician Noel Gallagher’s ex-wife Meg Mathews and society photographer Sam Taylor-Wood. Rosemary Ferguson gave birth to their first child the following year. Dinos Chapman is married to Tiphaine de Lussy, who runs the children's clothes label Miss Fleur. The couple have two daughters, Seraphine and Agathe.

Notes and references

External links

• The Chapmans on White Cube web site
• BBC Collective Video interview with The Chapmans filmed in White Cube
• Jake and Dinos Chapman: Bad Art for Bad People - exhibition at Tate Liverpool, December 2006 - March 2007
• Turner Prize 2003 Shortlist
• The art of subverting the Enlightenment - A harsh critique of the Chapmans' philosophy
• Interview by Emily Bearn
• interview by Maia Damianovic
• Pdf of interview by Simon Baker on the philosopher George Bataille
• The IoS PROFILE: Jake and Dinos Chapman
• A brief profile by Alison Roberts in the Observer
• "Art protester hurls paint at Chapman" - story in the Telegraph
• interview by Matt Lippiatt 2005