Jake and Dinos Chapman
Young British Artists who reworked Goya, mutilated mannequins, and bought Hitler's watercolours to paint over.
Jake and Dinos Chapman were born in 1966 and 1962, worked as assistants to Gilbert and George, and began collaborating in 1991. The work has consistently gone at the point where art is supposed to stop: Great Deeds Against the Dead, a three-dimensional reconstruction of a Goya etching; the Hell tableaux, vitrines holding thousands of hand-painted toy soldiers, the first of which burned in the Momart fire in 2004; the defaced Goya portfolios; and the series in which they bought watercolours attributed to Hitler and painted rainbows over them. They were shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2003 and have exhibited at Tate and the Royal Academy. They have also worked separately.
Attribution between joint and individual work is the practical question with anything offered under this name, since both brothers have produced solo work and the market treats the two differently. Beyond that, the sculptural pieces are unique and often fragile — painted resin, fibreglass and modified mannequins that were never made to travel — while the etchings, screenprints and portfolios exist in editions and account for most of what actually comes to auction. Signature, edition number and the publisher's documentation are the normal reference on the printed work.
If you own a work by Jake and Dinos Chapman
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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