If you’ve followed Damien Hirst’s career and read any of the interviews he’s given, you’ll know that he has a particular disgust for those friends and former studio assistants who ask for art to sell or sell art that he’s given them as presents. Hirst’s anger seems particularly justified by this story in the Telegraph:

Dean Whatmuff, also an artist, says he must have accidentally picked up the journal 20 years ago, while he was house-sitting for Hirst, but only realised it recently it while unpacking an old box. He had a rootle through, saw that it contained various turgid declarations of passion for the woman who later became Hirst’s girlfriend, and decided, as any friend might, to exhibit the diary at an art show in east London.

Hirst called the police, and the diary has since been returned to him. “I was Damien’s friend,” protested Whatmuff. “I thought it was an interesting artefact. But when he found out about the exhibit, he was pissed off.”

Damien Hirst is Right to Bring His Friend to Book (Telegraph)