Canny operator who has made a fortune from art
AS ONE of the publicity-grabbing Young British Artists in the Nineties, Marc Quinn proved he was a canny operator when it came to generating headlines.
His 1991 work, Self, a cast of his head made from 10 pints of his own frozen blood, brought early fame.
Educated at Millfield in Somerset, before studying history of art at Cambridge, Quinn spent several years as a penniless artist before he caught the attention of Jay Jopling, the dealer and gallerist. He was included in the famous Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1997, along with Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst. Some of his early works were made using placenta and excrement.
He began making marble sculptures and in 2005 created the acclaimed Alison Lapper Pregnant for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.
After Lapper came his most ostentatious work: a cast of Kate Moss contorting herself in a yoga position, set in solid 18 carat gold. It was, Quinn said, “an image of all the impossible dreams that lure people to wreck their lives on the rocky shore of reality”.
Many of the YBAS, now in middle age (Quinn is 56), became wealthy. Quinn is no exception. He has a studio and office complex in Clerkenwell, London, with assistants and a chef.
Quinn told one interviewer that he was free from financial pressures. “I can afford to make something and I don’t care if it sells,” he said.