Cunning stunt by Damien Hirst to launch new mag

At 46, Damien Hirst may be more of a Middle Aged British Artist than a Young one these days, but it seems he still has the power to shock. The cover of a new magazine featuring a model with a design by Hirst tattooed on her vagina has apparently been banned by WH Smith.
 
The tattooed butterfly appears, modelled by Londoner Shauna Taylor, on the cover of the launch issue of Garage magazine. The mag is produced and edited by Dasha Zhukova, who, while best known as Roman Abramovitch's girlfriend, has made previous forays into the world of contemporary art.

The controversy-courting image of 23-year-old Taylor, photographed in black and white by Hedi Slimane, is censored – up to a point – in that her shaved and tattooed pudenda are covered by a giant butterfly sticker and the instruction: "Peel slowly and see."
 
Readers following this instruction are rewarded with the sight of Shauna Taylor's labia decorated with an inked butterfly, "its abdomen formed by her pudendal cleft," as the Guardian delicately puts it.

Shauna Taylor told the New York Post that she was delighted with her new, and lasting, adornment. Although Hirst designed it, he stopped short of wielding the tattooist’s needle, leaving that to the London-based specialist, Mo Coppoletta. But she showed it to Hirst once it was done.
 
"I was hoping it might feel kind of nice," said Taylor, "but it was probably the worst pain I have felt. I thought I was going to pass out."
 
It was worth it in the end, she told the Post. "I have a piece of art on my vagina. Not one single person can ever say they gave birth through a Damien Hirst piece of art. I can  - if I ever give birth."
 
Hirst's butterfly design is part of a series of tattoos designed for the magazine by such art world luminaries as Jeff Koons, Jake and Dinos Chapman, John Baldessari and Paul McCarthy, all photographed by Slimane.
 
Volunteers were sought to be tattooed – but Dinos Chapman bucked the trend by being his own human canvas. He now has ‘I'm With This Idiot’ tattooed on his right arm, with an arrow pointing at himself. ·