Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

If you weren't tuned into UNC-TV for Charlie Rose last night, you missed a devastatingly interesting interview of art icon Damien Hirst. I felt compelled to dig a little deeper online, and in just a very few minutes I was practically swimming in screenplay subplots. I encourage you to explore for yourself on your lunch hour, but in the event you're running low on time, here's the beef.

Damien Hirst is the most successful and widely-recognized of a larger group of artists known as the Young British Artists, who led the British shock art movement of the 1980s. His fortunes changed in 1990 when, upon seeing Hirst's first major animal installation piece, A Thousand Years, Charles Saatchi fell in love...

...with the piece and purchased it on the spot. One of the famed founding brothers of not one, but TWO of the U.K.'s most successful advertising agencies, Saatchi soon offered to finance pretty much anything Hirst could dream up. Thus blossomed a symbiotic relationship...

...spanning nearly 13 years, feeding Saatchi's passion for building a collection while funding Hirst's fascination with the grandiose and macabre. During this time Hirst:

• won the Turner Prize, Britain's most famed visual arts honor, offered annually by the Tate Modern

• had an installation banned from display by New York public health officials, citing a potential for "vomiting among the visitors."

• tried his hand in film, writing and directing a short film starring Eddie Izzard

• painted a calibration pattern for the Beagle 2 space probe, with which the probe was supposed to calibrate its cameras after landing on Mars (failed, but still!)

• scored a #2 U.K. hit with his band, Fat Les

• bluff-sued British Airways for copyright infringement over a design of one of their magazine spots

• WAS sued by, and settled with, a British toy company

• enraged most of the western world with his controversial statements on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks

Since 2003, Hirst's career and work have attained record-breaking heights. His art continues to reflect his focus on the most basic of human imperatives - life, death, truth and love.

Last year Hirst staged a show featuring For the Love of God, an 18th century skull completely encased in diamonds - $15,000,000 worth of diamonds. The piece sold for a staggering $100 million. Just a few months earlier, Hirst set the record for the most expensive piece sold at auction by a living artist; his Lullaby Spring sold for $19.3 million.

In his interview with Rose, Hirst makes several references to fellow artist Jeff Koons, who has his own crazy story! Koons went to art school, then worked on Wall Street as a commodities broker, before becoming a big-time überartist himself. Koons fell in love...

...with and married Hungarian-born Italian porn star Ilona Staller, who...

...held down an alternate, 5-year career as a member of the Italian parliament. No Way!

It didn't work out between Jeff and Ilona - but in November of last year, a scant three months after Hirst set the record, Koons dethroned his idol to take the auction record for a piece of art by a living artist. His Hanging Heart sold at Sotheby's for $23.6 million.

What a rush. Artstar icon livin' is fu-un to talk about. And now that I have you all worked up, you should swing by the RED auction. Thrown down by Sotheby's and paid for by Hirst and BONO HIMSELF, the project is impressive in scale, scope and execution. The art is mostly great; I promise it's not scary or gross. The cause is noble and urgent, and the web site is bitchin'.

Happy Valentine's Day.