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
Buy art, build a museum, put your name on it, let people in for free. That's as close as you can get to immortality...
Art is the closest you can get to immortality, though it's a poor substitute - you're working for people not yet born - and people want it because it is brilliant. It ends up in museums anyway; the rich have to give it back to the people, it's their only option. There are no pockets in a shroud.
Museums are for dead artists. I'd never show my work in the Tate. You'd never get me in that place.
It's amazing what you can do with an E in A-level art, twisted imagination and a chainsaw.
To me it's like, this is the kind of world I live in and these are all the people who are artists who are doing what I'm doing, but in their own way.
I've seen things that are 200 years old, in formaldehyde.
Anything you can do with your hands and feet. Great.
One thing leads to another with my work.
She wasn't much to look at, but she was great to dance with.
I have a Californian girlfriend and she's into a lot of Californian bands so I listen to that.
I like the confusion you get between science and religion … that’s where belief lies and art as well.
I love color. I feel it inside me. It gives me a buzz.
Being best is a false goal, you have to measure success on your own terms.
You've really got to get down on the floor with yourself and get low in order to make great art. I think you've just got to accept who you are and do the most unbelievable things.