Marc Quinn - Kate by Marc

The new IDEA book is KATE BY MARC. That is Kate Moss by Marc Quinn, of course. A tale of 2006 to 2008, when celebrity gossip ruled and the financial crisis hadn’t yet castrated excess. The former was imperative, the latter was irrelevant to Marc Quinn’s Sphinx and Siren: life-sized-and-then-some sculptures of Kate Moss, the former cast in bronze and painted white, the latter cast in solid gold. Quinn makes busts of his own head, from his own blood. Quinn was the first artist commissioned to adorn Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth in 2004. He presented Alison Lapper Pregnant which cut the predominantly male, non-disabled canon. His questioning of whom we idolise as a society led him squarely to Kate, and birthed Sphinx (2006) and Siren, created for the British Museum in 2008. Raven Smith wrote the brilliant introduction for the book: “Having considered bodies society did not traditionally idealise, Quinn then asked himself the opposite question: if society could agree on one perfect body, whose would it be? The answer, in 2006, was embarrassingly obvious. Kate Moss.” — Raven Smith And naturally, Kate by Marc is page after page of Kate. This book is the start to finish of these sculptures. Marc’s meticulous measuring of Moss’ perfect proportions. Portraits and Polaroids. Yesteryear’s Google interface and tabloid tales of her scrapes and scandals that left her all the more iconic. Pretzelled limbs and Moss plaster cast in the studio. It is the complete behind the scenes of making an icon of an icon. In the middle section of the book, printed on a premium paper stock, are 15 unseen collages of Kate. Quinn pasted Kate’s face onto found images from various print media – chopped up and rearranged contorted bodies in every unnatural pose you can think of. These might have been research or sketches for the sculptures 20 years ago, but today we present them as standalone artworks, nestled in-between the behind-the-scenes documentation and newspaper clippings of the time. Introduction by Raven Smith 2026 25 x 20 cm 128 pages Softcover with gatefolds Obi band First edition of 750 © IDEA