Damien Hirst Quotes

12 Sourced Quotes

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
I've got two ways of looking at this. I am either a genius – hummmm, fantastic – or the art world is incapable of dealing with the kind of art that is going on today. My answer is the art world is fucked. I'm not a genius.

Damien Hirst
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
I think the idea is more important than the object. The object can look after itself. It will probably last long after I'm dead. I'm more frightened of being stabbed myself. You can always get another shark.

Damien Hirst
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
The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel.

Damien Hirst
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
I think there's a handful of eye people and billions of ear people. Some people go look at it and think it's great, so they buy it, and all these other people hear that they've bought it so they buy it too.

Damien Hirst
As an artist you have to reinvent yourself everyday. Which I think is what you do anyway as a person, which is why people fall out, split up, get together... It's like a turning over.

Damien Hirst
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
It's amazing what you can do with an E in A-level art, twisted imagination and a chainsaw

Damien Hirst
I sometimes feel that I have nothing to say and I want to communicate this.

Damien Hirst