Brothers grim: all's fair in art and gore for the Chapmans

HERE ARE SOME VITAL facts about Jake and Dinos Chapman, known simply as the Chapman Brothers: they are British artists. Their most famous work is titled Hell and their second-most-famous work is F***ing Hell. These underworld sculptures consist of thousands of tiny figures – many in Nazi uniforms – inflicting hideous acts of cruelty on one another.

This month, a series of similarly “underworldly” dioramas will be on show in Hong Kong, and will take up the entire ground floor of the White Cube gallery in Central.

When you’re on your way to interview the Chapman Brothers, however, what torments you are the stories of their run-ins with journalists. After well-known British interviewer Lynn Barber wrote about them, they threatened to kill her if they ever saw her again. Barber had asked Dinos during the interview whether his deformed hand (a result of rheumatoid arthritis) played a role in their London Royal Academy exhibition featuring deformed, anatomically jumbled mannequins of children – and Dinos did not take it kindly.

Five minutes into an interview with The Observer in 2006, Jake – finding the two questions inane – cut it short and the journalist was frogmarched to the door and chucked into the rain with the words, “Get out, just get the f*** out”.

These tales are not encouraging on a London afternoon of cruel wind and snow, and as your minicab driver gets lost on the way. The brothers have a studio near the now less glorious Olympic Stadium

The cab driver asks about the people at this mysterious address. When he hears that they have, among other activities, purchased watercolours by Adolf Hitler and reworked them, the driver – who is Polish – looks round in amazement. “Did Hitler have any talent?” he says.

The same question could be asked about the Chapman Brothers. The answer: it depends on whom you ask. As with all the so-called Young British Artists (YBAs), opinion is deeply divided.