Way back in the good old days that was August, we noted that Damien Hirst was going to have a mega exhibit across all 11 Gagosian Gallery locations with The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011. With Hirst's retrospective at the Tate Modern set to open this April 2012, these January 12, 2012 openings for Spot Paintings should be a good precursor.

We received a nice message today from Takashi Murakami's Kaikai Kiki Co in advance of their benefit auction with Christie's for the victims of Japan’s Tohoku-Pacific Earthquake. The benefit will include artists such as Damien Hirst, KAWS, Jeff Koons, Mr., Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Gabriel Orozco, Aya Takano, Luc Tuymans, and many others.

French icon Brigitte Bardot, even if you can't name one film she was ever in, has a very recognizable look. Andy Warhol knew it, too. An exhibition of Andy Warhol's portrait series of Bardot just opened at Gagosian Davies Street in London, with five of the works never being exhibited publicly before, and never together in series.

Gagosian Gallery will be starting off 2012 with quite a bang, exhibiting “Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011” across all 11 of their spaces in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong. This is the first time Gagosian has dedicated all locations at once to a body of work by one artist.

Sometimes you just have to look past the subject matter and enjoy the concept. Gagosian Gallery just announced Richard Phillips first short film, "Lindsay Lohan." Phillips takes the perpetual mess and explores "the legacies of classical portraiture in relation to the mediated representations of contemporary popular culture."

We were quite honored to have Gus Van Sant featured in our March 2011 issue of the magazine, and it is good timing that he has a collaborative show with Academy Award co-host and actor/writer/artist, James Franco. The exhibition, Unfinished, stems from Van Sant and Franco's time spent on the set of Milk and Van Sant opening the vaults to his My Own Private Idaho dailies to Franco. More after the jujmp . . .

    Last night I stopped by the opening reception for Mike Kelley’s exhibition at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills.  Photos and more after the jump…      

Making a note of the most famous contemporary artists working today, Japanese artist Takashi Murakami is on that short list. Murakami will be taking his international recognition to one of the world's premier private gallery properties, Gagosian Gallery in Rome on November 13, 2010.