If you thought comic books were just for low-brow art fans, you may want to think again, as this year’s Art Dubai and Middle East Film and Comic Con (MEFCC) have joined forces to bring a rare piece by Damien Hirst to Dubai.
In typical Hirst fashion, the piece isn’t exactly a nice watercolour of some trees, but rather a decorated Stormtrooper helmet. Yes, those Stormtroopers, the ones from Star Wars, which neatly ties up the MEFCC link. It will be joined by an assortment of other helmets as part of an exhibition at The Dubai Mall starting today and running through the weekend, then continuing next month at MEFCC (April 3 to April 5 at the Dubai World Trade Centre).
It’s all part of Art Wars Dubai, which will ultimately see 20 of the helmets decorated by local artists sold off, alongside Hirst’s work, in an auction at Comic Con on Saturday, April 5. The original designer of the Stormtrooper uniforms, Andrew Ainsworth, will be at Comic Con giving a workshop on his experiences designing and making props for more than 70 films including Star Wars, Aliens and Flash Gordon.
This is only the second time the Art Wars exhibition has been commissioned globally. The first took place at London’s Saatchi Gallery and featured helmets decorated by Hirst, David Bailey and Ainsworth himself, among others. Like its London predecessor, the proceeds from the Dubai event will go to the charity www.missingtom.com, the fund set up by the Art Wars and Art Below founder Ben Moore to search for his brother Tom, who disappeared 10 years ago. Ironically, the exhibition may never had happened at all if George Lucas had his way.
In 2011, Ainsworth finally walked away victorious from a seven-year legal battle with the Star Wars creator. Lucas had the backing of his glittering Hollywood empire as well as stalwarts of the industry including Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Peter Jackson in attempting to stop Ainsworth from producing and selling Stormtrooper memorabilia, but after seven years, £700,000 (Dh4m) in legal costs, hearings in courts in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and facing bailiffs knocking on his door demanding US$20m (Dh70m), the plucky British designer is finally free to do with his designs as he pleases, including using them in charity exhibitions such as this.
The whole saga rested on the fact that Ainsworth originally created the uniforms for Lucas on the basis of a verbal agreement. Unbelievably, considering the cultural behemoth that Star Wars became, the job had been casually passed on to Ainsworth, an expert in working with plastics. The chance came after a puppeteer friend’s own efforts in clay had proved fruitless, so he suggested Ainsworth “buy him a drink” if anything came of it. Ainsworth told the BBC following the court case: “I spent two days on it and made a prototype and Lucas said: ‘Great, I’ll have 50’.”
That could easily have been the end of the story, but in 2002, facing a period of financial difficulty, Ainsworth decided to dig out an old helmet and some "bits and pieces", which he was amazed to see sell for £60,000 at Christie’s auction house. Unsurprisingly, he returned to his old moulds and went into business selling replicas. Equally unsurprisingly, by the time a few models had been sold in the US, Lucas’s team were onto him and the $20m court case was filed in 2004.
The result of the case was good news for Star Wars fans, who can now legally own one of Ainsworth’s full uniforms for £1,500 and now it’s good news for art fans, too. Ainsworth himself had one final bit of pleasure to take from the result. Speaking after the conclusion of the case in 2011 he noted: “The way we’ve funded it is to make the characters, which is the ironic thing about it, it’s really the empire striking back. During the period of the court case I’ve made about 2,000 and sold them around the world."
[ cnewbould@thenational.ae ]
→ Check out Weekend's Oasis in The National tomorrow for a look at the Art Wars Dubai Stormtrooper helmets. The helmets will be on display at The Dubai Mall from today until March 30 and again from April 3 to April 5 at Middle East Film & Comic Con at the Dubai World Trade Centre, where Andrew Ainsworth will give a workshop and the helmets will be auctioned
