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
I mean, people listen to music, and they like that, but I think in England, a lot of people don't like contemporary art.
Commercials are so contemporary and up to date that when you're involved in that visual world, you can't really go backwards.
I have titles floating around in my head; I have sculptures floating around in my head. It's like a collage.
It's ridiculous what I do. I can't believe in it - but I have to.
I did a load of medicine cabinets a long time ago and I named them after Sex Pistols songs. I suppose I must be getting old if I'm naming work after Philip Larkin poems.
I liked The Beatles a lot when I was growing up.
I don't think I'd want my pet in formaldehyde, but I guess in America they would.
I don't really have a career plan.
You have to step over the boundaries sometimes just to find out where theyare.
I wanted a shark that's big enough to eat you, and in a large enough amount of liquid so that you could imagine you were in there with it.
But I could never make a judgement that something was obscene.
Sensation is an element of what I do, and why not? It's not sensational for the sake of being sensational, but it's sensational art... It's like touching skin.
Art goes on in your head. If you said something interesting, that might be a title for a work of art and I'd write it down.
Even as a kid in drawing class, I had real ambition. I wanted to be the best in the class, but there was always some other feller who was better; so I thought, It cant be about being the best, it has to be about the drawing itself, what you do with it. Thats kind of stuck with me.