Damien Hirst Art Quotations

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

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

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

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.

Kids are naturally gifted at art from a very young age. The problem is when they get older and become self-conscious. The process should always be fun, though.

For me, art is always a kind of theater.

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.

People don't like contemporary art, but all art starts life as contemporary - I can't really see a difference.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

You've really got to get down on the floor with yourself and get low in order to make great art. I think you've just got to accept who you are and do the most unbelievable things.

I like the confusion you get between science and religion … that’s where belief lies and art as well.

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.

As an artist, you don't stop making art because people are not buying it.

As soon as something becomes art I think you get over the fear

To be an artist is not about fame; it's about art, which is this intangible thing that has got to have lots of integrity, whereas being famous doesn't really take any integrity. But I think you have to admit that you want to be famous, otherwise you can't be an artist. Art and fame together are like a desire to live forever.

Art comes from everywhere. It's your response to your surroundings.

The idea is more important than the object.

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.

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.

I don't see what else you can spend your money on... If you want to own things, art is a pretty good bet.

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.

Art goes on in your head. If you said something interesting, that might be a title for a work of art and I'd write it down.

Sensation is an element of what I do, and why not? It's not sensational for the sake of being sensational, but it's sensational art... It's like touching skin.

I mean, people listen to music, and they like that, but I think in England, a lot of people don't like contemporary art.

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 love art. It is uplifting.

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.

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.

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.

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.