# Jake and Dinos Chapman ## Summary > Iakovos "Jake" Chapman (born 1966) and Konstantinos "Dinos" Chapman (born 1962) are British visual artists, often known as the Chapman Brothers. Their subject tries to be deliberately shocking, including, in 2008, a series of works that appropriated original watercolors by Adolf Hitler. > > In the mid-1990s, their sculptures were included in the YBA showcase exhibitions Brilliant! And Sensation. In 2003, the two were nominated for the annual Turner Prize but lost out to Grayson Perry. In 2013, their painting One Day You Will No Longer Be Loved III was the subject of Derren Brown's Channel 4 special, The Great Art Robbery. > > In 2022, with the announcement of Jake Chapman's solo show Me, Myself and Eye, it was disclosed that the Chapman brothers had ended their professional association. Jake Chapman made reference to mutual "seething disdain" and told [the Guardian](The%20Guardian.md) they were both "sick of the partnership" and were "no longer having fresh ideas together". > > [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake%20and%20Dinos%20Chapman) ## Notes **Warning: This article contains images and subjects that might disturb those who are sensitive in nature, and reader discretion is advised. I do not make those warnings lightly, and am simply telling you what to expect. This article will discuss the objectification and sexualization of children in both the art and fashion industries.** **All imagery of children, even though fake, has been edited to blur out explicit components of said images. It is my belief that Jake and Dinos Chapman derive sick enjoyment from people’s disgust at their work, while simultaneously insulting those who do. I will not give them the satisfaction of unwittingly subjecting anyone to their perversity. All links provided in the article have been archived from their original version and are unedited. ** > "We offer a very good social service to our patrons and employers, who are the bourgeois intelligentsia. Our little antics and our melodramas and our psychodramas furnish the bourgeoisie with the sense that their world is radical and dangerous and audacious and all these big nice words. It’s what art expresses for them." > > Jake Chapman ### Introduction On November 10, 2012, screenwriter Simon Blackwell [tweeted](https://archive.ph/Hgjfn), “Our desire to see the resignation of everyone in public life who makes a mistake is fucking mental.” To which Dinos Chapman replied, “It’s quite fun though, no?” Let’s put that to the test, shall we Dinos? Konstantinos ‘Dinos’ Chapman is one half of an artistic duo, with the other half comprising his brother Iakovos ‘Jake’ Dinos. Jake and Dinos are known as what is called ‘transgressive’ artists–which is a form of art that aims to [transgress](https://web.archive.org/web/20090606045003/https://feastofhateandfear.com/archives/zedd.html) its viewers or participants. Simply put, the art exists to outrage, offend, and violate basic moral principles. Since the mid 1980’s, a new group of transgressive artists has emerged, creating one disturbing display after another. An example includes Canadian performance artist Rick Gibson who made a [pair of earrings](https://www.newspapers.com/clip/114049022/the-daily-telegraph/) out of real human fetuses and ate a piece of human testicle. However, there are also countless others: Nick Zedd, Marina Abramovic, and Dread Scott to name a few.  Among this collection of Dada aficionados and edgy Nihilists you’ll find the brothers Chapman, whose works vary from gruesome and grotesque to, in the opinion of many, downright evil in nature. Regardless of what you or I or anyone what else might think, one thing is true: They are darlings of both the art and fashion world. The current state of the contemporary art world is rather pathetic–offensive spectacle is key to success, which largely comprise of attention-seeking smut, garish novelty, and pointless, graphic violence. The reward for creating such pieces is money, notoriety, and success in being featured at globally-famous art galleries. The creators of said spectacles often respond to criticisms with disdainful dismissal of the critic. The cost paid by society as a whole for this continued elevation and success is incalculable. The drive to continue to push the envelope and capture the hearts and money of the artistic elites has arguably led to the current state of the world in which we find children and teenagers routinely sexualized in entertainment and advertising in the name of art and high fashion. The subjects of this article, Jake and Dinos Chapman, have recently found media outlets like [Newsweek](Newsweek.md) [rushing to their defense](https://archive.ph/20221201130956/https://www.newsweek.com/who-are-jake-dinos-chapman-artists-dragged-balenciaga-scandal-discussion-1763848) as a current wave of people investigating the depravity of the high fashion and art scene have called into question the nature  of some of their more repulsive and offensive work–in particular that 94 of their pieces have [sold at Christie’s](https://archive.ph/XRftk) for large sums of money–many of them involving naked children featuring genitalia for mouths and noses. #### An Overview of Jake and Dinos Chapman Born in the U.K. in the 1960s, Jake and Dinos Chapman rose to rather quick prominence in the 1990s as part of the generation of “[young British artists](https://archive.ph/0YdBF)”– a grouping loosely arranged around [Damien Hirst’s](https://archive.ph/K3kP0) leadership and [Charles Saatchi’s](https://archive.ph/VMF1i) patronage. The Chapman brothers exhibited a clear “talent” for provocation to the furthest extreme, with works rife with sexual obscenity, savage violence and a purposefully puerile humor. Their first artwork [exhibited](https://archive.ph/ZWYwd) in 1991 and 1992, titled, “We are Artists.” It is a mud wall painting featuring a manifesto of sorts. It begins: “We are sore-eyed scopophiliac oxymorons.” Merriam-Webster [defines](https://archive.ph/pp3EQ#selection-989.0-989.106) scopophilia as, “a desire to look at sexually stimulating scenes especially as a substitute for actual sexual participation.”  #### Transgressive Darlings By the mid 1990’s, Jake and Dinos Chapman established themselves as “bad boys” of the London art scene, as described by many in numerous newspaper articles about them. Relatively few of said articles made much of an attempt to question Jake and Dinos about the nature of their art involving children, and those who did were often ridiculed or their likeness was used in the next art installation by the brothers–as was the case for Franco Toselli, an Italian art gallerist who [refused to show](https://archive.ph/alrSn) the brother’s work [_Mummy and Daddy Chapman_](https://archive.ph/C4ZQI) in 1994. The aforementioned work included a male and female mannequin, with the male covered in anuses and the female covered in penises and vaginas, with her right eye being replaced by a vagina. As retaliation for not displaying the vulgar art, Jake and Dinos took the head from the male counterpart in the _Mummy and Daddy_ installation, affixed a prosthetic penis to it in place of a nose, and then made a pornographic film with it they titled _Bring me the Head of Franco Toselli!_ As of today, the film is owned by the [Tate Gallery](https://archive.ph/20221203221044/https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/chapman-bring-me-the-head-of-t13788#) in London after is was donated in 2012. The head, however, was recently sold at [Christie’s](https://archive.ph/20221129012428/https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/no-regrets-collectors-edition/jake-dinos-chapman-b-1966-b-1962-24/165359) on October 19, 2022 for £6,048.  In a [2013 interview](https://archive.ph/20220323225158/https://www.ft.com/content/2c364e58-51d9-11e3-adfa-00144feabdc0#selection-1947.0-1947.152) with the brothers for _Financial Times_, the interviewer asked if they feel any responsibility for who buys their art. Dinos replied, “We can’t have any responsibility for that. We don’t make it for that purpose.” When the pornographic revenge film involving the severed head pictured above was first shown at the Ridinghouse Editions gallery in 1995, the four monitors displaying the film were visible from the street, [leading to it being closed down](https://web.archive.org/web/20220706115917/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/bring-me-the-head-of-franco-toselli-shapero-modern-gallery-to-show-explicit-chapman-brothers-film-10083430.html) due to laws prohibiting explicit material being on view where the public or minors may unwittingly see it. It was shown again in 2015 at the Shapero Modern Gallery. Mark Inglefield, curator of the show, [said](https://web.archive.org/web/20220706115917/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/bring-me-the-head-of-franco-toselli-shapero-modern-gallery-to-show-explicit-chapman-brothers-film-10083430.html), “Jake and Dinos are well known for producing shocking works of art, behind which there is a purpose to challenge assumptions about sexuality and politics. It was a very important artwork from that era. It would have been strange to leave it out of a survey of work from that era. It still retains the power to shock.” ## High-Profile Associations with Jake and Dinos #### Christie's Founded in 1766, Christie’s [describes itself](https://archive.ph/4EOVY) as, “a world-leading art and luxury business.” It is owned by majority by the holding company Groupe Artémis S.A., which is owned by the French entrepreneur François Pinault, who also owns the luxury holding company [Kering](https://archive.ph/20221128155803/https://www.kering.com/en/), which owns Gucci, Balenciaga, and Yves Saint Laurent to name a few. #### Tate Gallery The Tate Gallery in London describes its [mission](https://archive.ph/AwlWo) as, “to increase the public’s enjoyment and understanding of British art from the 16th century to the present day and of international modern and contemporary art.” #### Louis Vuitton  #### Recent Tweets In the event that this feed should become unavailable, it has been scraped and can be downloaded in spreadsheet format [here](https://archive.org/download/jakeand-dinos-chapman/JakeandDinosChapman.xlsx). Last collected on 11/29/2022.