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The Art of Deception: YBAs

Acronyms fill us with fear. They are corporate firms and sexually transmitted diseases. The cultured hipsters all over London would be falling off their fixie bikes to hear even the suggestion that YBAs might do the same, but we know differently. Never fear though, the Bluffer’s Guide to Art is here to plug any gaping holes in your art knowledge and save you from possible faux pas, starting right now with the Young British Artists (YBAs).

Who: The YBAs or Young British Artists. A group of visual artists who began exhibiting in the late 1980s. Big names include Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

What: We all enjoy the morning-after chat but Tracey Emin took this to a new level as she exhibited ‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995’, a tent adorned with the names of her conquests. Her work ‘My Bed’ came complete with menstrual stains, used condoms, cigarette packs.

In Damien Hirst’s ‘A Thousand Years’, maggots hatch, turn into flies, then feed on a severed cow’s head before meeting a violent end at the hand of an insect-o-cutor.

The money: Hirst’s ‘For the Love of God’ was a platinum human skull encrusted with 8,601 diamonds. It sold for £50 million.

Dinner party chat: Just say the buzzwords: sex, death and money. Less on the taxidermy while eating. Wearily shake your head and pour another glass when you mutter about them “selling-out” and “becoming the establishment”, with Emin snapping up her Dameship in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours.

The final blow: Show that you aren’t some faker who has read a newspaper guide but a real art lover by mentioning someone other than Tracey and Damien. Say you are so full that you feel like a woman in one of Jenny Saville’s paintings. Enjoy the gentle laughter.

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