Allegedly David Hockney recently took a dig at Damien Hirst when a poster for his upcoming show at the Royal Academy of Art read, “All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally.” The Royal Academy of Art has since clarified that the phrase appeared on Hockney’s gallery wall, not their poster, and Mr. Hockney was not attacking anyone specifically.

This got us thinking. It’s not uncommon for artists to have assistants or employ experienced craftsmen to help with the production of their work. Sometimes, that’s the only way to bring their ideas to life. Sometimes, that process is part of the art’s conceit. Sometimes, they just want the money without doing much of anything. Here’s a brief and wide survey of classical and contemporary artists who conceive, but don’t or didn’t always “make” their own work. This is not exactly “in defense” of Damien Hirst. It’s a bit that, but more of … “in contrast,” just some thoughts to levy the hype and hate currently swirling around the artist. Let’s get to it!

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For his latest visual trick, Switzerland-born, New York- and Zurich-based artist Olaf Breuning has transformed a group of nude gals and fellas into crude and alluring representations of seminal 20th-century artists using body paint, DIY props, and humor. The Art Freaks include all-stars like Andy Warhol slathered with chrome-colored paint and adorned with bananas and Takashi Murakami’s character Kiki, wearing nothing but pink and a cardboard psychedelic anime headdress. A few paint jobs mimic the style of these artists — we imagine that Ms. Jackson Pollock was splattered in much the same way the painter himself had splattered his canvases. Others channel and simplify complex internal themes, like the grand Maman spider sculpture series as a paint-doodle on the bare chest of Louise Bourgeois. Presented as a series of “larger than life-size” photographs at NYC’s Metro Pictures Gallery starting September 23, the images “conflate the tropes of so-called high and low artistic techniques as they discuss notions of kitsch, cliché, and reproduction.” Also, they’re just damn fun! Enjoy.

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Chances are, when an art world big shot dabbles in cover design, something curious happens. Last year, Superflat art superstar Takashi Murakami covered POP Magazine, flinging a 28-year-old Britney Spears back into a school daze à la fuzzy lightning and manga-inspired styling. It was very awkward, yet gloriously so. Even though Damien Hirst can’t ever resist slapping his “signature” butterflies on everything, this year he had said “signature” butterfly tattooed on a most intimate region of a model volunteer for Garage Magazine. From vintage Dalí Vogue work to Chris Ware’s critical, brilliant and ultimately rejected Fortune cover, here are just some of the arty covers out there for you to flip through. Happy browsing!

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Our recent author-on-author, filmmaker-on-filmmaker and musician-on-musician insults have proved that creative folk are only human, and occasionally enjoy a good rip on their industry compatriots. Artists are no different, albeit they do it a bit differently. What they lack in media exposure, they make up in specifics, attacking “sickly” lines and “filthy” shades or, like Salvador Dalí, outright making up verbs like “outuglying” to drive their insults. Naturally, a good portion of these revolve around artists cutting down each others’ relevancy — yesterday’s Renaissance “daubers” are today’s graffiti “toys.” Looks like the battle of egos will never go away. (Oh, good!) Here are 30 harshest historical and contemporary artist-on-artists insults. We’d love to hear yours in the comments.

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Given that yesterday was what would have been famous portraitist (and self-portraitist) Andy Warhol‘s 83 birthday, we’ve been thinking a little bit about the long history of self-portraiture. Many artists’ first subjects are themselves, which makes some sense, considering the proximity and availability of one’s own face. Often artists’ self portraits differ greatly from the rest of their work, but some trade almost exclusively in the form. Like anything else, the mediums and methods vary widely, but all are fascinating in that they attempt to show an inner part of the artist more directly than any representation of an outside subject could. With that in mind, click through for our very incomplete (how could it not be?) visual history of self-portraiture, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your favorite pieces in the comments!

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With the news of Walmart heiress Alice Walton preparing to open her massive Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas in November and California’s billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad set to build The Broad, a stunning Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed museum that will open in Los Angeles in 2013, we thought it was time to take a look a how wealthy art collectors are promoting their prizes. From the edgy Rubell Family Collection, housed in a former Drug Enforcement Agency storage site in Miami and Francois Pinault’s coveted contemporary art on view in historic buildings in Venice to a Sheikh’s rich collection of Arab art exhibited in a converted school in Qatar and Korean national treasures shown at Samsung’s masterfully designed Leeum in Seoul, here’s a glimpse at some of our favorite private museums around the world. If there are others that you think we should know about, please share.

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Today at Flavorpill, we wondered where the rest of Jonah Hill disappeared off to. We feared the kind of crowds this 50-foot tall lava lamp in Washington State will attract. We were amused by the fact that Takashi Murakami thinks that his artwork is too expensive. We watched a montage of Tami Taylor from Friday Night Lights saying y’all a whole bunch. We were surprised to hear that Jim and Pam from The Office are expecting another baby (are things like that allowed to happen in the off-season?). We had some deep thoughts about the Muppets post-Jim Henson — particularly Kermit. We wanted to go on a $14,000 shopping spree in London with Beyoncé and Tina Knowles. We learned how to take a screenshot on our iPhone. We liked this photo series of stormtroopers on vacay. And finally, we wished that French artist Benjamin Boré would make the streets of New York City more bouncy. His installation in Bourges, France looks like so much fun!

The rise and fall of the mass-produced hit — be it movie, song, or movie star — is a phenomenon unique to the last century. Nowhere has this cycle been more palpable over the past two decades than in the music industry, which, as detailed by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired, in his book The Long Tail, “perfected the process of manufacturing blockbusters. The resounding commercial success of teen pop — from Britney Spears to the Backstreet Boys — showed that the business had its finger firmly on the pulse of American youth culture … their marketing departments could now predict and create demand with scientific precision.”

Then came the burst of dot-com bubble, rise of Napster, and peer-to-peer file trading networks. The fool-proof plan for creating a music mega-star began to splinter. Music moguls poured millions into lawsuits but the tide of music culture had long since turned, leaving executives disillusioned and bitter with the industry they knew so well. One by one they paid their respects (however vehemently) and either adapted or deserted.

Last week, Tommy Mottola, former head of Sony Music Entertainment who signed and developed artists like Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Destiny’s Child, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, the Dixie Chicks, and Mark Anthony, announced he had officially set his sights on a new industry: art. Over the fourth of July holiday, he opened a gallery in East Hampton that boasted of a hodgepodge of blue-chip works by artists like Warhol, Picasso, de Kooning, Alex Katz, Leger, and Rauschenberg. Mottola told the Wall Street Journal that “there’s never been a serious gallery out here in the Hamptons … I thought, with my knowledge and experience, I’d like to try my hand at it.”

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Today at Flavorpill, we celebrated the summer solstice with Murakami’s adorable Google Doodle. We looked at Bon Iver’s new album by the numbers. We found some filthy jokes hiding in these ancient works of art. We had some of our lingering questions about Columbia House’s mail-order music club (namely, was it legal?) answered by our friends at Mental Floss. We were strangely excited to hear that Conan O’Brien will appear as a background extra in an upcoming episode of How I Met Your Mother. We went inside of the Momofuku Kitchen Lab, a top secret location where David Chang performs his culinary experiments. We learned about the origin of the Good Humor bar. We watched the worlds of Peanuts and Doctor Who visually collide. And finally, we wondered if that Wet Hot American Summer prequel that David Wain’s still talking about is such a good idea. Outside of the salaries issue, we think it would be almost impossible to replicate the magic that made the comedy a cult classic.

Mike Leavitt has a giant Art Army. Hand-crafted from scratch out of 20 to 30 custom-made parts, each lil famous artist busts out with physical likeness and personal aesthetic sensibility. His grinning Jeff Koons is karmically turning into a big balloon animal. Matthew Barney is in full-on Cremaster Cycle mode, Takashi Murakami is mid-metamorphosis into a psychotic Kawaii toon, and Julian Schnabel comes with a removable ceramic plate halo. And those are just his freshest four!

The Seattle-based proud Pratt drop-out is having a solo show at the Jonathan Levine Gallery later this year. Meanwhile, enjoy Ron English a-clowning, Banksy a-pranking, and Damien Hirst getting sliced.

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