Damien Hirst Quotes
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I was brought up Catholic, and I felt the power of art from a very young age - seeing the brutality of all those images of flayed apostles and tortured saints was a pretty strong introduction.
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Making art, good art, is always a struggle. It can make you happy when you pull it off. There's no better feeling. It's beauteous. But it's always about hard work and inspiration and sweat and good ideas.
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Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity.
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It'd be nice to make lots of money but it's quite difficult, because every time I make lots of money I make a bigger piece that costs lots of money.
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For me, art is always a kind of theater. When I started the spot paintings, I made them as an endless series. But I was never serious about it being an endless series. It was just an implied endless series. The theater means you just have to make it look good for that moment in the spotlight.
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I always feel like the art's there and I just see it, so it's not really a lot of work.
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No, I don't believe in genius. I believe in freedom. I think anyone can do it. Anyone can be like Rembrandt.
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But it's like the horror of being in a studio with a blank canvas. I used to always run out of ideas because there are so many possibilities and I would just think, well what am I going to do now!
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Picasso, Michelangelo, possibly, might be verging on genius, but I don't think a painter like Rembrandt is a genius.
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I was taught to confront things you can't avoid. Death is one of those things. To live in a society where you're trying not to look at it is stupid because looking at death throws us back into life with more vigour and energy. The fact that flowers don't last for ever makes them beautiful.
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I always feel a bit trapped when a painting goes for millions of pounds and only one person can have it. If you can have that as well as a poster on every student's wall, then you're in a very enviable position. I'd like to do a Damien Hirst for £500 at some point.
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I think an ashtray is the most fantastically real thing.
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There's no possible way you can get what you want.
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I always ignore money.
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But the answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it. And just to live. But you're doing that anyway. However you intellectualise it, you still just live.
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The spot paintings and spin paintings were trying to find mechanical ways to make paintings.
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People don't like contemporary art, but all art starts life as contemporary - I can't really see a difference.
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As a father, I would say I am more like a mother. I do a lot of hugging.
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I think money is important for everyone, because the lack of it is so painful.
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'Painting like a child' isn't a negative for me... it's something only great artists can really achieve. The childlike quality of some of Picasso's drawings is precisely what makes them so masterful and extraordinary; the ability to express complete visions, feelings and portraits through a continuous line.
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I've been asked to do a retrospective since I was about 28 and I always thought that was a bit odd. It's great to look forward as an artist because in the future the possibilities are infinite; you look back and it's all fixed so it's a scary thing.
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I made one untitled piece.
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The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact.
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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.