Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst
Damien Steven Hirstis an English artist, entrepreneur, and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists, who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly the United Kingdom's richest living artist, with his wealth valued at £215m in the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List. During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth7 June 1965
Whereas if you suddenly go, OK, I choose to die now, you take the matter into your own hands.
There's a lot of things that people don't like, I think it'd be difficult for anyone to go in and say they didn't like the whole thing, because it's enjoyable, it's like a funfair, I hope.
Anything you can do with your hands and feet. Great.
I think it's just, I really enjoy art, and I just hope that when people come and see the exhibition, I want them to be just grabbed and thrown around a bit by visual things.
I don't really buy any, but I have a lot of friends who do, so I go out sober and say I'm not gonna take any drugs and then I end up drunk and do it. And then wake up the next day and say I'm never doing that again.
And I think, you know, I like it, so I can't understand it, I think if you're gonna have this stuff going in your ears, you might as well have some stuff going in your eyes.
But I'm not ambitious for myself, or for attention.
It's very easy to say, 'I could have done that,' after someone's done it. But I did it. You didn't. It didn't exist until I did it.
Never let money get in the way of an idea
If the choice is between buying another building or a Pollock, I'd go for the Pollock every time.