Damien Hirst & Stella McCartney Give Art To Yoga Charity

Damien Hirst

Major artists including Damien Hirst and Stella McCartney have donated artwork to a charity auction, the proceeds of which will go towards a Special Yoga Therapy Centre in London.

The auction – going by the title ‘Raising The Roof’ – also includes artworks by  Tracey Emin, Banksy, David Hockney, Gavin Turk, Sam Taylor-Wood, Marc Quinn, Phyllida Barlow, Henri Matisse, Jamie Reid, Alice Instone, Angela De La Cruz, Bethany Murray, Bob Carlos Clarke, Christophe Von Hohenberg, Dan McDermott, David Bailey, David Dawson, David Bray, Gill Rocca, Jane Simpson, Jeremy Houghton, Keke Vilabelda, Lucie Bennett, Lucille Dweck, Maria Marshall, Mary McCartney, Nasser Azam, Olly and Suzi, Polly Morgan, Rachel Howard, Venetia Dearden – to name but a few!

And it’s all in a good cause with the Charity offering ‘yoga therapy’ to children with special needs – including those with cerebral palsy, downs syndrome, ADHD, dyspraxia, autism and learning difficulties. It also offers early morning ‘get ready to learn’ yoga sessions to schools. In effect the Centre works with more than 600 children a week, trains over 70 yoga therapists a year.

So it looks as if Damien Hirst is not the devil incarnate after all! This news certainly flies in the face of the Occupy Movement’s allegations that Hirst is ‘a capitalist who exploits labour for vast gain, and pulls up the drawbridge just as the shit begins to fly’: ‘Sharks. Death. Love. God. Money. If Hirst is anything, he is the brash Goldman Sachs of the art world. He has a vast personal fortune of over £200m, accumulated through an alchemy that would leave even the most brash bankers in awe: stock medicine cabinets, spots of paint, flies, butterflies and severed cows heads transformed into pieces that sell for millions.’

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