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 think if you've made it, why not name it?
I quite like it to be risky. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet. I've arrived at that point in the art world where there really is a chair that you sit in.
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...
I'm 43. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet.
I've seen things that are 200 years old, in formaldehyde.
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 thought it might be nice to have a little line on the side going, just in case, of doing famous people's pets for them, in formaldehyde.
We have had some animal rights things but they all get the facts wrong so they have to go away looking a bit stupid.
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.
Whenever I go to another city to do an art exhibition, the only way to get through it is to get drunk, because it's so similar to the last one.
The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact.
People don't like contemporary art, but all art starts life as contemporary - I can't really see a difference.