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Wednesday, 01 July 2015 02:12

Damien Hirst: "What Have I done? I've Created a Monster"

During the period he refers to as his “glory years”, Damien Hirst had a favourite gag. He would pull his foreskin through a hole in his pocket, then exclaim in mock alarm: “What’s that?” “People would go, ‘You’ve got some chewing gum on your trousers.’ They would touch it and go, ‘What the fuck?’” he said, smirking. He played this trick on drinking buddies and he played it on complete strangers. He particularly enjoyed targeting self-important art world types. Hirst recently turned 50, and these days he appears to be almost fully house-trained. He still has the swagger, leather jacket and T-shirt wardrobe of a rock star, and his mobile phone is loaded with eye-poppingly deviant film clips that he collects for his amusement and often shares; but he also now does yoga three times a week, and stopped flashing when he gave up drink and drugs almost nine years ago.

Britain’s most famous living artist continues to stir controversy, although he is more likely to be excoriated for the failings of the national culture than lauded as a national treasure. Guardians of “real art” and highbrow defenders of the avant garde routinely nestle together under the same duvet, shocked not so much by the paintings and sculptures and installations he churns out at an extraordinary rate as by his refusal to accept that the time has come to keep his creations, like his penis, decently out of sight.

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