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Celebrated Pill Vacuum Pete Doherty Is Spraying Blood All Over The Place And Calling It Art

His new show includes a piece smeared with Amy Winehouse's blood.

Finally, someone has devised a way to absorb culture and contract Hepatitis A-through-Z in the same evening.

Rocked by the untimely death of his ex-flame Amy Winehouse, bloated Babyshambles front man and celebrated pill vacuum Pete Doherty has decided to take some time away from the limelight in an attempt to regain some sense of normalcy in his otherwise tabloid-tempering existence. Of course, in a typically Doherty-esque fashion, this entails releasing a gallery's-worth of paintings made from his own blood.

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This week, The Cob Gallery in London will house On Blood: A Portrait of the Artist, a show comprised of dozens of blood-spattered original works, as well as some of the art Doherty produced for his 2009 solo album Grace/Wastelands. The basement of the gallery is set up almost as a living museum to Pete's more private home life, featuring "collections of old typewriters, cameras, guitars, tobacco boxes, crucifixes, rosaries, skulls, small elephants, mannequins sporting red Libertines jackets, a stuffed swan, two ravens and heaps of records, ranging from jazz great Charlie Parker to the soundtrack of James Bond movie Dr. No" taken from his former Wiltshire residence, according to Reuters.

In other words, it looks like the most high-profile episode of Hoarders you've ever seen, save for a few decomposing cats.

So how does Pete get the blood from his coeur to the canvas? Doherty uses a technique he calls "arterial splatter," by which he draws his blood with a syringe and squirts it onto the piece. Unsurprisingly, the man is good with needles. If you're anything like me, you just winced violently enough to constitute your workout for the day.

The next step? He compliments each unique splatter pattern with collages, song lyrics, and original poems--mostly his own, but some collaborative, like "Leet Strife," a piece he worked on with French actress and chanteuse Charlotte Gainsbourg.

One more thing - this:

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A piece with Amy Winehouse's blood smeared alongside the word "ladylike," produced by the late singer herself.

An authentic "Doherty" will run you between 4,500 and 8,000 pounds (that's between 7,100 and 12,700 USD), which may seem like a steep cost to take home something normally discarded as toxic medical waste, but for die-hard fans (and Dexter Morgan) the chance to own a piece of their favorite artist (literally) is priceless. For the more squeamish, limited edition prints are available for 500 pounds (790 USD) a pop, and posters come in at a semi-reasonable-but-still-inappropriately-priced 75 pounds (120 USD)--a great home addition if your idea of the perfect conversation piece is something that says "I am a poster of a print of a painting made from a circling-the-drain English has-been's disease-riddled bodily fluids."

While some might call the show gruesome or morbid or just plain old "icky," On Blood's co-curator Rachel Chudley explains that, rather than a petty attempt to make headlines merely through shock and gross-out factor, the ensanguined exhibit is actually a celebration of life through the most literal medium possible:

"If you look at art through the ages, the subject matter has always been life. We all die and painting in blood is a reminder of our mortality. It's a universal medium. I don't think there is anything gory about it."

Well, that makes one of us.

@sashahecht