Top 100 Quotes About Damien Hirst: Famous Quotes & Sayings About Damien Hirst

#1. I've had laser eye surgery and I don't wear glasses any more, so people just go, 'You're not Damien Hirst.' I don't get recognized on the street.

Damien Hirst

#2. On the opposite wall was a Damien Hirst spot painting, bought by Arabella after a decent bonus season. Roger's considered view of the painting, looking at it from aesthetic, art-historical, interior-design, and psychological points of view, was that it had cost forty-seven thousand pounds, plus VAT.

John Lanchester

#3. I'm a massive fan of Brit Art in general and Damien Hirst in particular. I think he's an absolute genius and should be celebrated in every way.

David Morrissey

#4. Great art, she felt, had a calming effect on the viewer; it made one stop in awe, which is exactly what Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol did not do. You did not stop in awe. They stopped you in your tracks, perhaps, but that was not the same thing; awe was something quite different

Alexander McCall Smith

#5. I love Damien Hirst. I respect his work a great deal, and I am happy that the polka dots I started using have become a symbol of love and peace around the world with everybody joining hands to use them in this way.

Yayoi Kusama

#6. The coolest party I've ever D.J.ed would have to be for the artist Damien Hirst. It was an amazing party in Berlin. I had such a great time, and people danced all night long.

Chelsea Leyland

#7. I have a Damien Hirst spot painting which I love. It has pride of place over my dining-room table.

Cat Deeley

#8. Until the late 1970s there'd either be only black or white in the paintings or if there were colours it would be a small amount, not a large area, and with the color separated from other colors by black or white (which is formula for Damien Hirst's successful dot paintings, incidentally).

Matthew Collings

#9. When art is defined by Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, you've got a society that's impoverished.

Robert Adams

#10. I'd like to work with Damien Hirst.

Steve Madden

#11. I think Damien Hirst is hilarious. And I think he's a true artist. He's not hilarious first; I think he is a real artist, and I also think he's got an amazing sense of humor.

Jemima Kirke

#12. My friends are all megalomaniacs - from Damien Hirst to Jack Nicholson - all of them.

David Bailey

#13. Damien Hirst is acceptable because he's a brand. It's like buying a Porche. Hardline conservatives will never accept it, others think it's a massive waste of money but most will just shrug and move on

Qatar Cultural Official

#14. 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 Â£500 at some point.

Damien Hirst

#15. Damien Hirst is the Elvis of the English art world, its ayatollah, deliverer, and big-thinking entrepreneurial potty-mouthed prophet and front man. Hirst synthesizes punk, Pop Art, Jeff Koons, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Bacon, and Catholicism.

Jerry Saltz

#16. Whenever I've been well-known or hitting the press, I've always had to get my credit card out to prove I'm Damien Hirst.

Damien Hirst

#17. If I go to London, everyone wants to talk about Damien Hirst. I'm just not interested in him. Never have been.

Dave Hickey

#18. I think art is good at looking back and looking forward. I don't think art is good at looking head-on. At the end of the day, people are more important than paintings.

Damien Hirst

#19. But for me, from my point of view, I don't mind if it falls over ... if you break the glass you replace the glass, if the sheep falls out you can always get a new sheep.

Damien Hirst

#20. Being best is a false goal, you have to measure success on your own terms.

Damien Hirst

#21. You've got to be oblivious to other people, the push and pull of other people's opinions, the way other people measure success. It's then that you realize you are 100 percent who you are and you have to use that who-you-are 100 percent in order to create great things.

Damien Hirst

#22. I like the confusion you get between science and religion ... that's where belief lies and art as well.

Damien Hirst

#23. Most people live in the city and go to the country at the weekend, and that's posh and aristocratic, but actually to live in the country and come to London when you can't take it any more is different.

Damien Hirst

#24. 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.

Damien Hirst

#25. As an artist you're looking for universal triggers. You want it both ways. You want it to have an immediate impact, and you want it to have deep meanings as well. I'm striving for both. But I hate it when people write things that sound like they've swallowed a f ... dictionary.

Damien Hirst

#26. A lot of people thought I wasn't doing anything because I was spending a lot of time socialising and going out, but I've always managed to get work actually done.

Damien Hirst

#27. It's a great advantage to be able to play people off against each other, isn't it? You go to Christie's and get a quote on something. And then you go to Phillips' and you tell them what Christie's has given you. I like auctions for artists.

Damien Hirst

#28. Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity.

Damien Hirst

#29. You need a big ego to be an artist.

Damien Hirst

#30. I liked The Beatles a lot when I was growing up.

Damien Hirst

#31. Death's just something that inspires me, not something that pulls me down. I used to get called morbid at school. I have always loved horror films; I like being frightened.

Damien Hirst

#32. You'd never look at a Rembrandt and say, 'That's just wood and canvas and paint - how much?!' It's all about how many people want it. It works on a pair of jeans as well - they're just material and stitching, and as soon as you walk out of the shop, they're worth nothing.

Damien Hirst

#33. The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact.

Damien Hirst

#34. 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.

Damien Hirst

#35. A painting probably is the most shocking increase in value, from what it costs to make to what you sell it for.

Damien Hirst

#36. I used to believe I was going to live forever. And then you suddenly become aware that you're not.

Damien Hirst

#37. No, I don't believe in genius. I believe in freedom. I think anyone can do it. Anyone can be like Rembrandt.

Damien Hirst

#38. In fact, the first piece of art I ever sold, I paid someone else to make the next one, so I could actually keep going out drinking.

Damien Hirst

#39. 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.

Damien Hirst

#40. For artists it's a lot easier to make art in bad times than it is in good times. When you've got no money it's easy to just drink your way through it and make great art. But if you're making lots of money it can be very problematic.

Damien Hirst

#41. My Mum brought me up to believe that if you look after the pennies then the pounds look after themselves, and I could never do it.

Damien Hirst

#42. Never let money get in the way of an idea

Damien Hirst

#43. 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.

Damien Hirst

#44. I always try to make everyone mellow down, make sure everybody's happy. The people I have employed have always kind of stayed with us. A lot of people who come to work for you are artists in their own right. And they want to work for you because they want to pick something up.

Damien Hirst

#45. I made one untitled piece.

Damien Hirst

#46. People always say that my work is sensational or shocking but there are truly shocking things you could do, and my sculptures don't go anywhere near that.

Damien Hirst

#47. The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel.

Damien Hirst

#48. But I'm more interested in why people are frightened by Jaws and why Jaws was such a hit than saying Spielberg's my main influence.

Damien Hirst

#49. I just hope that I can be kind of like the Beatles. I really like that kind of model. I like the way that without losing integrity they could change through fashion and not look back at the '60s and vomit when they saw what they'd done.

Damien Hirst

#50. When it comes to the British monarchy, I prefer to be seduced by an image than presented with a real person. It's kind of a Warhol thing.

Damien Hirst

#51. But whenever I look at the question of how to live, the answer's always staring me in the face. I'm already doing it.

Damien Hirst

#52. That's the great thing about art. Anybody can do it if you just believe. With practice, you can make great paintings.

Damien Hirst

#53. The spot paintings and spin paintings were trying to find mechanical ways to make paintings.

Damien Hirst

#54. I love color. I feel it inside me. It gives me a buzz.

Damien Hirst

#55. I'm 43. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet.

Damien Hirst

#56. 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.

Damien Hirst

#57. I always feel like the art's there and I just see it, so it's not really a lot of work.

Damien Hirst

#58. I've never learned to drive because I get lots of ideas when I'm a passenger in a car. I love to get in a car with a driver and just think and work things out.

Damien Hirst

#59. But I always liked the fact that you get these totally unacceptable images, but they're taken by a really expensive photographer, with great light, and in terms of the quality of the photograph it's a great photograph, but in terms of imagery it's unacceptable, and I like that contradiction.

Damien Hirst

#60. I think I like big issues, but I don't believe in God or religion.

Damien Hirst

#61. There's no possible way you can get what you want.

Damien Hirst

#62. You've got to be able to copy things faithfully before you can deviate.

Damien Hirst

#63. If the choice is between buying another building or a Pollock, I'd go for the Pollock every time.

Damien Hirst

#64. Here's one from me: 'You have to be aware that everyone else is thinking far too hard about themselves to be thinking about you, whoever you are.' If you want it, you can have it. Once you know that, you can be free.

Damien Hirst

#65. I had a passport where I wrote 'artist' under 'occupation' and I remember thinking, 'That's it, it's proved!'

Damien Hirst

#66. The idea of being a painter, I've always thought, is better than being an artist or a sculptor.

Damien Hirst

#67. You have to step over the boundaries sometimes just to find out where theyare.

Damien Hirst

#68. I love art. It is uplifting.

Damien Hirst

#69. But then architects don't build their own houses.

Damien Hirst

#70. It's ridiculous what I do. I can't believe in it - but I have to.

Damien Hirst

#71. When you've just done it, you're not sure. But when you've sat with it for a couple of hours and you don't want to do anything more to it, that's a great feeling. It can stand on its own two feet.

Damien Hirst

#72. It's very easy to say, 'I could have done that,' after someone's done it. But I did it. You didn't. It didn't exist until I did it.

Damien Hirst

#73. I can't understand why most people believe in medicine and don't believe in art, without questioning either.

Damien Hirst

#74. I don't really have a career plan.

Damien Hirst

#75. I just do what everybody asks me to do, in terms of media and stuff.

Damien Hirst

#76. For me, art is always a kind of theater.

Damien Hirst

#77. Commercials are so contemporary and up to date that when you're involved in that visual world, you can't really go backwards.

Damien Hirst

#78. I think suicide is the most perfect thing you can do in life.

Damien Hirst

#79. Picasso, Michelangelo, possibly, might be verging on genius, but I don't think a painter like Rembrandt is a genius.

Damien Hirst

#80. I believe all painting and art should be uplifting for the viewer.

Damien Hirst

#81. There was a point I could have just churned out the spot and spin paintings for ever and laughed all the way to the bank.

Damien Hirst

#82. I gave up painting by 16. I secretly thought I would have been Rembrandt by then.

Damien Hirst

#83. Because it's visual art, a lot of it comes from childhood experience but then a lot comes from the visual language - in advertising and stuff like that - which is around us.

Damien Hirst

#84. Immortality is really desirable, I guess. In terms of images, anyway.

Damien Hirst

#85. I sometimes feel that I have nothing to say and I want to communicate this.

Damien Hirst

#86. The spot paintings, the spin paintings, they're all a mechanical way to avoid the actual guy in a room, myself, with a blank canvas.

Damien Hirst

#87. I'm a hypocrite and a slut and I'll change my mind tomorrow.

Damien Hirst

#88. I have always been aware that you have to get people listening before you can change their minds. Any artist's big fear is being ignored, so if you get debate, that's great.

Damien Hirst

#89. 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.

Damien Hirst

#90. In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death.

Damien Hirst

#91. I used to watch 'Top of the Pops' when I was a kid and say 'Yeah!' or 'Boo!' at every single song. So there was nothing in the middle. You brutally put it on one side or another.

Damien Hirst

#92. 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

#93. 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.

Damien Hirst

#94. I think as an artist you have to reinvent yourself every day.

Damien Hirst

#95. 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 can't be about being the best, it has to be about the drawing itself, what you do with it.' That's kind of stuck with me.

Damien Hirst