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Damien Hirst Quotes

Damien Steven Hirst is 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 a head in 2003 and the relationship ended.

Death is a central theme in Hirst's works. He became famous for a series of artworks in which dead animals are preserved—sometimes having been dissected—in formaldehyde. The best known of these was The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 14-foot tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a vitrine . He has also made "spin paintings," created on a spinning circular surface, and "spot paintings", which are rows of randomly coloured circles created by his assistants.

In September 2008, he took an unprecedented move for a living artist by selling a complete show, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby's by auction and bypassing his long-standing galleries. The auction exceeded all predictions, raising £111 million , breaking the record for a one-artist auction as well as Hirst's own record with £10.3 million for The Golden Calf, an animal with 18-carat gold horns and hooves, preserved in formaldehyde.

In several instances since 1999, Hirst's works have been challenged and contested as plagiarised, both in written articles by journalists and artists, and, in one instance, through legal proceedings which led to an out-of-court settlement.

✵ 7. June 1965
Damien Hirst photo
Damien Hirst: 7   quotes 0   likes

Famous Damien Hirst Quotes

“I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it. At the moment if I did certain things people would look at it, consider it and then say "f off". But after a while you can get away with things.”

Damien Hirst

Spalding, Julian. "Why it's OK not to like modern art" http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article1098907.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2, The Times, 8 May 2003.
Hirst quoted by Julian Stallabrass in 1990.

“I was with this guy who was a plasterer, and at lunchtime he was eating a stuffed heart… I was thinking, "I'm not like these guys. I'm an artist." And I saw a bee come over to some flowers and get all the pollen out. I was looking and thinking, "How does it do that?" And then the guy who was eating the stuffed heart said, "How does that bee do that?"”

Damien Hirst

Beckett, Andy. "Arts: A Strange Case" http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19951112/ai_n14017521/pg_5?tag=artBody;col1, The Independent, 12 November 1995
Talking about when he worked as a builder after college

“The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel.”

Damien Hirst

On the Way to Work, p. 82, Faber and Faber, 2001.
Most of Hirst's "spot paintings" are executed by assistants.

“Great art – or good art – is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different. There's boring conceptual art and there's boring traditional art. Great art is if you can't stop thinking about it, then it becomes a memory.”

Damien Hirst

Source: Elizabeth Day Damien Hirst: 'Art is childish and childlike' http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2010/sep/26/damien-hirst-art, The Guardian, 26 September 2010

“I just wanted to find out where the boundaries were. So far I've found there aren't any. I just wanted to be stopped, and no one will stop me.”

Damien Hirst

Kuhn, Nicola, "You can puff all you like Damien, but the wind's gone out of Britart" http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/1999/mar/16/features11.g21, The Guardian, 16 March 1999.

“I started taking cocaine and drink … I turned into a babbling fucking wreck.”

Damien Hirst

On the Way to Work, Faber and Faber, 2001.

“It’s not a coincidence that governments use art on coins and notes. They do this to help us believe in money. Without art, it’s hard for us to believe in anything.”

Damien Hirst

Shaw, Anny, NFT breakthrough: Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin creates 99% energy efficient blockchain—and Damien Hirst is its first artist https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/nft-breakthrough-ethereum-co-founder-joe-lubin-creates-energy-efficient-blockchain-and-damien-hirst-is-its-first-artist, The Art Newspaper, 30 March 2021

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