12 Takeaways From Damien Hirst’s Epic Instagram Interview With Himself, From His Favorite Living Artist to His Advice for Aspiring Painters

Unlike the dead butterflies in
his work, Damien Hirst is not easy to pin down.

Everyone wants an interview with
the richest living artist, so Hirst decided to kill 98 birds with
one stone. In a four-part series on Instagram he has called “On the
Psychiatrist’s Couch,” the 54-year-old YBA answers questions
submitted by the public about his life, his work, and how he is
coping in isolation.

The artist conducts the
“self-interview” from his cavernous studio in Stroud, where he is
working on his latest series of
cherry-blossom paintings. He explains that he is still driving
to and from his studio despite the lockdown in Britain, which
technically prohibits anyone but key workers from leaving the house
for non-essential purposes.

Nevertheless, the artist says he
is taking the coronavirus seriously. “For a while I thought, ‘Maybe
I just need to get it, to get it out of the way.’” he says. “But
then I thought, ‘I don’t like that lottery.’” As a former heavy
smoker, Hirst is among those more vulnerable to the respiratory
disease (listen up, David
Hockney), so he is wearing masks and gloves in his car on the
way to the studio. “I don’t care how stupid I look,” he
says.

Interspersed with some banal
details of his life such as a penchant for snooker and an obsession
with the UFC, the artist gives some insight into the inspirations
behind some of his famous works. But we’ve watched all four so you
don’t have to. Here are the most interesting tidbits from Hirst’s
Insta-confessional.

• A David Cronenberg film
  inspired Hirst’s “Medicine Cabinet” series. The 1988
  film Dead
  Ringers, which stars
  Jeremy Irons as identical twin gynecologists, inspired the medicine
  cabinets, while a rift between his mother and sister was among the
  trigger points for Mother
  and Child, Divided, the
  1993 work comprising four glass-walled tanks containing the
  bisected and preserved halves of a cow and calf.
• There’s one material
  he’s always dreamed of working with: plutonium. We can’t
  imagine why that’s never happened yet. 
• He lives by one
  particular mantra. “Sometimes you have to step over
  the edge to know where it is.”
• He’s not as scary as he looks. The former
  “enfant terrible” of the art world says there is a misconception
  that he is somehow aggressive. “I’m a softie, really,” he insists.
  Sometimes, he adds, people are disappointed that he is not more
  wild, since his early work often came out of drug- and
  alcohol-fueled binges.
• He treasures his relationship with the late designer
  Alexander McQueen. Hirst says that when he first met
  the British designer, he was “mad into cocaine and drinking like a
  maniac.” Later into the friendship, there was a role reversal, and
  Hirst says that watching his friend deteriorate was an eye-opener
  that gave him perspective on what he used to be like.
• He doesn’t drink anymore. Hirst hasn’t
  touched alcohol for 13 years, and the strongest drink he likes is a
  cup of rooibos tea—too much caffeine, he says, leads to
  insomnia.
• He doesn’t believe the art market is a
  meritocracy. “Loads of amazing artists never get
  discovered,” Hirst says. He also gives a shout-out to a particular
  artist he sees as undervalued: Helen Beard, who was included in a
  2018 group show at Hirst’s own Newport Street
  Gallery. Her works can be had for around £5,000 a pop.
• The first time his work sold for £10,000, it “blew
  [his] mind.” After that, however, the money became
  somewhat meaningless. He admits that there was a bit of a “slump”
  in his market around
  2010, but says that he doesn’t let the ups and downs get in his
  head—he just gets on with things.
• He’s not a huge fan of
  Salvador Dalí. He describes the work of the
  Surrealist as “hit and miss”—but he loves Francis Bacon because of
  his “lack of traditional ability.”
• His favorite living artist is fellow YBA Sarah
  Lucas. “I think it’s because it’s the antithesis of what I
  do in a lot of ways,” Hirst explains. “Like, I make the diamond
  skull and she does like two fried eggs and a kebab on a
  table.”
• He’s got advice for young artists. The
  main takeaways: “make your paintings bigger,” and “travel as much
  as you can” to pick the right art school.
• He won’t stick with the bright cherry blossom paintings
  forever. After a period of focusing on floral, joyful
  works, Hirst is considering delving into some more dark paintings
  that he began after a friend died by suicide. “There’s a fear that
  in dark times art becomes irrelevant,” Hirst says, “but maybe it’s
  more relevant.”

The post 12 Takeaways From Damien Hirst’s Epic Instagram
Interview With Himself, From His Favorite Living Artist to His
Advice for Aspiring Painters appeared first on artnet
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