Mick Hartley

Dinos Chapman explains himself:

The Bank of England is investigating claims that two brothers defaced the portrait of the Queen on a number of £20 notes at an art fair (David Brown writes). Jake and Dinos Chapman turned the Queen’s nose into male genitalia for customers at the Frieze Art Fair, perhaps unaware of a provision in the Currency and Bank Notes Act 1928, which makes this an offence.

Dinos Chapman told The Times: “We weren’t defacing the notes, we were embellishing them.” When asked why they turned the Queen’s nose into a penis, he said: “It’s the thing that we always do.”

Indeed it is.

And this is a fine exchange – from an (undated as far as I can see) interview with the brothers, speaking as one, in the Journal of Contemporary Art (via David Thompson):

Damianovic: Do you wish to propose the excessive image as a revolutionary efflorescence of identity, a kind of post-humanist revolt, a jouissance?

Chapman: Yes.