A few years ago, the LOL cat was born. Yes, that's right, as in "Laugh Out Loud" cat. In case you don't know what a LOL cat is, check out this website. It's chock full of oddball photos of cats--fat cats, fluffy cats, scary cats, behatted cats--paired with oddball pidgin-English phrases. You either love or hate this kind of humor.

But you are bound to love what Marianne Goldin, a University of Washington undergrad and freelance illustrator, has done with LOL cats. She wants to make a LOL cat art movement out of them. Wired's blog reported:

"Take ceiling cat," she said. "He's the god of LOLcat land. And to see him re-created in a 16th-century Renaissance-inspired oil painting, it strikes me as a new painting movement."

All this, just when you thought art couldn't get weirder!

With funding from the I Can Has Cheezburger? website, Goldin curated the one-night only show and auction "LOL Art" last night. Proceeds went to an adult literacy program. I guess if you can't help grammatically challenged cats, you help their grammatically challenged owners.

If you’ve been reading the Arts section of any newspaper, you’ve probably read about Damien Hirst’s auction at Sotheby’s, (in)famous for bypassing galleries and dealers and for racking in so many pounds—111.5 million, to be exact. Hirst named the show “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever,” but Lee Rosenbaum had it right when she called it “Beautiful Inside My Wallet Forever.”

Even if you think Hirst’s work is subpar, you have to admire him for his gall and genius when it comes to getting people to pay so much money for his work. And now, to rake in even more money and build his name even further, Hirst is opening a shop in London right next to Sotheby’s where the big auction happened. The shop will be run by Other Criteria, Hirst’s publishing and merchandising company, and open on October 6.

If you can’t make it to London and are just dying to break your piggy bank to smithereens, you can buy a silkscreen of “For the Love of God” (the diamond-encrusted skull) for 10,000 pounds, or an 18-carat gold charm bracelet jingling with casts of pills for 25,000 pounds. But, alas, in an age when our American piggybanks are going on a major diet, it looks like the 15 pound postcard set is a bit easier to stomach--if you want to support Hirst, that is.

In case there isn't enough talk about celebrity in America, here's some extra fare from England. And it¹s not about Obama, or Paris, or Britney. It's about Kate Moss.

Today the British Museum announced that 'Siren,' a nearly $2.8 million, 110-pound solid gold statue of Kate will grace the Greek sculpture collection. The sculptor, Mark Quinn, says it¹s the largest gold statue made since the time of ancient Egypt.

I wonder if the Obama artists are getting any ideas ....