1. Huffington, A; Picasso – Creator & Destroyer; Pan Books, 1988. It is the astonishing and bitterly controversial portrait of the 20th century’s greatest artist. From his earliest teenage obsessions to the nightmare truth behind his final years, it reveals as never before the tragedy of a man incapable of love: a man who expressed his passion in art and the bizarre humilation of the woman – and men – who fall victim to his uniquely powerful spirit. The book changed the world’s view of the man who changed our view ...

(Pernilla Holmes, ARTnews, October, 2007) The past summer (2007) Damien Hirst officially became the world’s most expensive living artist both at auction and in the gallery, bypassing even long-established greats like Jasper Johns. In June, Sotheby’s London sold Hirst’s Lullaby Spring, a 2002 medicine cabinet filled with hand-painted pills, for $19.3 million, superseding John’s auction record for a living artist. But that’s nothing compared with the $100 million price on For the Love of God, Hirst’s diamond-encrusted platinum skull, which London’s White Cube gallery sold in August, reportedly to a consortium ...