Damien Hirst

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Presenter0:33

My castaway this week is Damien Hurst, the best known and most successful conceptual artist in the world. Life, death, desire, fear, beauty, horror. His creative preoccupations are pretty standard fare. His art using sharks, maggots, butterflies, glass formaldehyde, and even sometimes paint is not. His best known works have become iconic symbols of contemporary culture, and his exhibitions and auctions attract attention in the way that a carcass attracts flies.

Presenter1:04

Growing up in Leeds, his mum was something of an early artistic influence. She had dots painted on her front door, and whenever little Damien said he'd finished a drawing, she'd lay another sheet of paper down and tell her son carry on.

Presenter1:18

He once said, People don't like contemporary art, but all art starts life as contemporary.

Presenter1:24

I'm sure there were people in caves going, I like your cave, but I hate that crap you've got on the wall. So, Damien Hurst, then, let's first of all take a quick trot through some of your best-known work, and I'd like to go first of all to Mother and Child Divided, which is a mother and child calf and cow separated in four different cases, and you can walk in between them and you can see their innards. How do you want somebody to feel once they've looked at that piece of art?

Damien Hirst1:49

I remember uh seeing a Richard Serra sculpture. It was like two pieces stood side by side. I remember walking through the centre of it and thinking, Oh my god, this thing could fall on me and kill me, thinking that's a great response and a great reaction to a you know, physical reaction to a piece of art and then I remember thinking that if you could take a walk through a cow, you could get that same sort of shock. You can't help but walk in and then once you get in you kind of want to get out. I think you can explain it, but I think it should definitely work primarily without explanation.

Presenter2:15

I had described you as a conceptual artist. Is that a fair description?

Damien Hirst2:19

Um, I don't know. I mean I was in court once over the guy who poured ink in my sheep when it was vandalized. He was sort of trying to say that I was a conceptual artist and that he was improving my art in a conceptual way by pouring ink in it.

Presenter2:23

When it was

Damien Hirst2:30

And then when they asked me to say what kind of artist I was, I chose the word traditional. I definitely had a romance with conceptual art, but I don't know if I'd describe myself as a conceptual artist.

Presenter2:38

So how would you? Just artists would be enough.

Damien Hirst2:40

I think yeah, I think there was a period when conceptual art became

Damien Hirst2:43

Traditional

Presenter2:44

What about this idea of painting, of being able to paint? In two thousand nine you had this exhibition of paintings. It was called No Love Lost. It was eviscerated by the critics and people said, Well, you see, here's the proof. Here's the proof that Damien Hurst is not an artist.

Presenter3:00

Did that matter to you that they hated it?

Damien Hirst3:01

No, not at all. I mean, you know, it's like I mean I I mean, you know, I mean, I think they were just waiting to have a dig really, you know. I mean, I've always tried to not take the praise seriously so that then when it gets slagged off, I don't have to take that seriously as well.

Presenter3:12

Your song Vindaloo by the band Fat Les, you were part of that band. It was the World Cup song in 1998. I notice it is not in your list of eights today. Why not?

Damien Hirst3:18

Yeah.

Damien Hirst3:21

It was in my list to start with, but I can kind of sing it in my head without having to listen to it.

Presenter3:25

Fair dues. Tell us about the first one we're going to hear this morning then.

Damien Hirst3:27

It's the Magnificent Seven by The Clash and in'7 I was twelve, so I was a bit too young to be a punk, but I really wanted to be a punk and I used to have like a bin bag at the bottom of the garden that I'd put my clothes in that I wanted to wear to go out in so I could change without my mum seeing.

Damien Hirst3:41

And Joe Strummer was somebody that I met years later who actually was one of the few people in my life that I've met who turned out to be a hero in real life.

Damien Hirst3:48

And one night when I was drinking with him, I asked him what his favourite lyric he ever wrote was. And he said it was Vacuum Cleaner Sucks Up Budgie.

Damien Hirst3:56

It was after he died. I went and re re-listened to it, and he does say it in the song.

Damien Hirst4:01

So I thought for a a memory of punk and a memory of Joe that would be the perfect song.

Speaker 34:07

Picking a map

Speaker 34:13

Well

Speaker 34:15

Can be

Speaker 34:16

Can't be fussy.

Speaker 34:17

Become the same reward, Socrates, a mill house mixed, both put the same weight through the kitchen. Tomato the creep or rent in tin, whose bought better to the billion million?

Speaker 34:28

Yeah.

Speaker 34:29

The Miss Slack!

Speaker 34:31

Vacuum cleaner sucks up Berkey.

Speaker 34:39

Bye.

Presenter4:41

That was the Clash and the Magnificent Seven. So, Damian Hurst, you had a mid-career, I suppose you would call it, retrospective at Tate Modern last year of your work.

Damien Hirst4:48

You were

Presenter4:50

Once upon a time, you happily shunned that sort of idea. You said museums are for dead artists. What was it that changed your mind?

Damien Hirst4:57

Yeah, I mean I found a bit of footage of me actually with David Bowery sat on the edge of one of my sculptures, um and where he's asking me what I think of um museums and I'd definitely say they're for dead artists. And then he says to me, Would you ever show at the Tite? And I was like, Not in a million years, I'd never show there.

Damien Hirst5:12

So I think it's

Presenter5:12

You know, you might change your mind.

Damien Hirst5:14

Yeah, mid mid career retrospective is quite a good uh way to describe it, I think. I felt almost like once you let the museums get hold of it, then it it gets destroyed in some way. I suppose you get to a point where you've suddenly got less time in front of you than you have behind you. I think, you know, when you get to that point, that's when you can start to look back comfortably.

Presenter5:30

In two thousand eight there was a two day auction of your work at Sotheby's, and it was judged by somebody by an art critic who would know about these things. It made more money in forty eight hours than all the art that was hanging by the artists in the National Gallery would have made in their lifetime. So it made a huge amount of money. I mean, was it hundreds of millions, hundred and eleven million?

Damien Hirst5:44

Uh

Damien Hirst5:47

A couple of hundred million dollars, I think.

Damien Hirst5:51

Um, because I could, you know, I mean I kind of I mean, I think also because people were telling me I couldn't. You know, even though I made two hundred million dollars, it's like, you know, you can get a bacon triptych for that. You get one painting by um a dead guy. So it's you know, it's not like you know, it's not you know, it's it's not an unheard of amount of money really, even though it's a lot.

Presenter6:07

Do you ever

Presenter6:09

I mean, I think I probably already know the answer to this, but I'm interested in probably slightly more than the answer, which is when somebody can buy a pedal bin on your website with the dots on it, or somebody holds up a Brit statuette this year and it's got the Damien Hurst dots on it because you designed it. Do you ever worry that you have

Presenter6:25

diminished people's perception of your art through

Presenter6:29

Spreading it far and wide through the sort of commodification of

Damien Hirst6:33

No, I mean I think there's a I think there's you know, I mean I have arguments about it'cause as you get older and as I get older it bec you know, I know as I'm doing it for longer, it does become like that, you know, and it's like every time I make somebody a surfboard it's like it goes on the wall and you kind of want them to surf it and you know and it as things become more valuable and you can't expect people to s sort of treat them as throwaways. I've always wanted to make art that you can't avoid, you know, not art that you can ignore in any way. I always used to say if you went in the supermarket and you put a jar of Vaseline and a cucumber in someone's trolley and followed them to the checkout and what what would they say, you know? They don't put are they gonna just buy them'cause they're so embarrassed to say these aren't mine and hold them both up'cause of the sexual references or are they gonna just get them out and put them to the side?

Presenter7:12

Have you ever done that?

Damien Hirst7:13

Yeah, of course.

Presenter7:14

You see, you're you're playing into the hands of people who say, Well, you know, contemporary art is just it's shock value, it's puerile, there's no nuance to it, the artistry is, you know, fleeting if it even exists. There there's not the subtlety that there is in what could be regarded as proper art, traditional art.

Damien Hirst7:32

But everybody's said that about every art from every time. Nobody's in a position to choose what's important and what's not. It's only important for the people who haven't been born yet. They decide. You know, even the most expensive things. You know, I mean, I worked out a long time ago that if two people have got a lot and a lot of money and you make something that they want, it's going to sell for a lot of money. And that's all it takes. And that doesn't ensure its place in history and doesn't ensure it gets into a museum either. I mean, I remember looking at Hamburger the other day and thinking, Oh my god, is this like something r is it going to seem really important in years to come? You know, and you can you have thoughts like that and if you think it is then you put it into an artwork and if you think it isn't then you ignore it. But as an artist you just try and make the right decisions.

Presenter8:06

How do you marshal your thoughts? As somebody who might be looking at a hamburger or looking at a church steeple or looking at a cow and thinking, I want to use that. Do you write them all down? Do you.

Damien Hirst8:14

Do you And I did find myself putting a kiss on an email to myself the other day.

Presenter8:16

Yeah.

Damien Hirst8:20

That's that's sick. Then you've got you're really in trouble when you're putting kisses on your own emails.

Presenter8:24

Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all, Damien. Let's have some more music, Damien Hurst. We're on your second choice. Tell me about this.

Damien Hirst8:32

Yeah, so this is the Trash Men Surfing Bird, which is the first song that my son, who is seventeen years old now, Connor, that he he kinda got into. You know, when we got in the car, he'd always make me play it over and over again. I've got three kids, so I chose three songs, the the first songs they ever ch got into to remind me of that,'cause I guess I won't be allowed to take them to the desert island.

Presenter8:52

You can't, you can take the easy.

Speaker 39:05

Everybody, I can't.

Speaker 29:05

Uh

Speaker 29:10

Seven fabric

Speaker 39:16

Yeah.

Speaker 29:19

Uh

Speaker 39:19

Yeah. Uh

Presenter9:30

That was the trash man in surf and birds. So, Damien Hurst, you said that when you were seven your grandmother died and you thought about death every day since.

Damien Hirst9:38

Yeah, I'd had conversations with her about death. She was the only kind of adult that I've spoke to about death, you know, and I talked about everything really. And she fell asleep smoking in the armchair and set fire to herself and died of the fumes, I think.

Damien Hirst9:48

I remember saying, What's the oldest anyone's ever lived for? and she said, like, hundred and six or something I was like, I thought to myself, I'm gonna live longer than that and I'm gonna avoid car crashes and accidents and getting stabbed and beaten up and killed and, you know, all these things.

Damien Hirst10:00

And then she said, No, no, no, you can't I said, What do you mean you can't? And she said, Oh, you die of old age And I remember thinking it was a real bummer. So that was the first time I really realized that death was unavoidable.

Presenter10:10

And you were one of three kids brought up in Leeds. Your mother said of you, He was my mistake, but he was the best mistake I've ever made. What does she mean of that?

Damien Hirst10:18

Oh well she uh she got pregnant before she was married and then had me. I think my grandmother, my my other grandmother said she wouldn't love me. So she went and had me in in a convent in Bristol.

Damien Hirst10:29

and then moved back to Leeds.

Presenter10:30

And so she married and you were brought up as a family with your half siblings and everything.

Damien Hirst10:34

Yeah, I think she got married when I was like six months old or something like that.

Presenter10:37

And the man that you called Dad, who you thought was your father, you found out much later wasn't. W was it important to you when you found that out?

Damien Hirst10:44

Um, I mean, I've looked back at it and he kinda brought me up like I was his eldest, not just like one of his kids. So, I think I've I've had a dad, you know, and he was my dad, and I went through the pain and when they got broken up and s separated. I've got a brother and sister who are don't like my you know, the death of my brother and sister.

Presenter10:57

Yeah.

Presenter10:58

Um tell me a bit more about day-to-day life. I said I've read in a clipping this thing about you have this faint memory of your mother painting dots on the front door, or at least getting your dad to do it. Tell me more about that. Because obviously you're in one of your most famous works are these snackle paintings.

Damien Hirst11:07

Tell me more about that. Because obviously you're in one of your most famous works of these animal paintings. I didn't think about that w when I was doing the dot paintings. I thought about it a long time afterwards. We lived in a place in Headingley and I remember there was a white door and I remember my mum got like a black

Damien Hirst11:22

Cereal bowl

Damien Hirst11:23

and drew pencil on round it onto a piece of newspaper and then cut the newspaper out and then got my dad to go out and spray these dark blue dots onto the door. Whenever I gave my address I'd say the address and say the one with the blue stots on the door and people would laugh thinking it was a joke and then they'd get there and it would have blue dots on the door. But I mean it's creative and it's art and it's you know, my mum was always into that. I mean she I remember I used to look at her life drawings. She used to go to life drawing classes and do them and I used to think they were like photographs.

Speaker 211:46

Do them

Damien Hirst11:48

She didn't like her art teacher at school and she ended up leaving at fifteen and I think she regretted it so she always was really happy that I carried on with art.

Presenter11:55

What were you like as a little boy?

Damien Hirst11:57

I think after you know, after my dad left and a little bit before I got into quite a lot of trouble. Burglaries, robbings, houses, all kinds of stuff, shoplifting. I was always in trouble at school, um, getting sent home for, you know, wearing the wrong clothes, fighting. I mean, crime is creative, I think, but once you realise the consequences, then you have to do something else. But I think a lot of what I do in art is criminal in a good way.

Presenter12:18

We'll use that in the trail.

Presenter12:22

It's too easy a parallel to draw, but I can't help thinking that, that that idea of doing the unacceptable is the thing that makes you feel most alive.

Damien Hirst12:29

Yeah, I mean, it's not even that. It's like my audience is one person. You've got to get get into their mind and lay eggs anyway, you know.

Damien Hirst12:36

I just want to put something in front of them that in a week's time they'll still be talking about it with someone they may meet in a pub.

Presenter12:42

More to come, Damien Hurst, for now though it's time for the music, tell me about this third one.

Damien Hirst12:46

So the third one is my second son who's twelve years old, Cassius' favourite tune when he was young, Big Yellow Taxi by Johnny Mitchell. It's a great tune and it's it's just it's got that great optimism.

Presenter12:49

Trouble.

Speaker 312:58

They pay paradise, put up a parking lot.

Speaker 313:03

With a pink hotel, a boutique and a swingin' hot spot.

Speaker 313:09

Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone? It tastes paradise, put up a park in love

Speaker 313:23

It took all the trees, put'em in a tree museum.

Speaker 313:28

And they charge the people a dollar and a half just to see you

Speaker 313:34

Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you've got till it's gone They pay paradise, put up a pocket mouse

Presenter13:45

That was Joni Mitchell and Big Yellow Taxi. So Damien Hurst, much of your art from the pristine medicine cabinets to the heads infested with maggots seemed to be preoccupied with decay and the proximity of death. When did you first get interested in gore?

Damien Hirst14:00

Gor, yeah, I mean I can remember being at my first school, which was Allaton Grange Middle School in Leeds, and I used to borrow the teacher's red pen to draw the blood.

Damien Hirst14:10

When Jaws came out he used to do loads of drawings of like people being eaten by sharks and I'd do the arms cut off, the legs hanging off, sinking to the bottom of the water.

Presenter14:16

And were you, even as this little boy, full of ideas?'Cause that seems to be the thing with you, that actually, you know, you almost don't have enough room in the world to to fit your ideas in. Did you feel like that when you were little?

Damien Hirst14:26

Yeah, I mean, I c I f I felt like a kind of jack of all trades, master of none really. I mean, I remember when I was at school I always wanted to be the best drawer, but I couldn't. In every school I was at there was somebody who was a better drawer than me in the class. I remember drawing dinosaurs and there was a guy who was just brilliant at drawing dinosaurs in my class.

Damien Hirst14:41

But I mean all great artists I think measure themselves in terms of themselves rather than against other artists. So you can kind of I mean you c I mean f for for me if I compare myself to other artists it sort of would

Damien Hirst14:52

Stump me and maybe make me not able to move forward'cause you just'cause you're looking at their results rather than their thought processes a lot of the time.

Presenter14:59

Right, so there's a need to be brave to even al allow yourself to do the art.

Damien Hirst15:02

Yeah, I'd not but also accept who you are. You know, you have you have to be truthful to who you are. A bit like Warhol and Coons, for instance. Warhol was, you know, totally into celebrity and famous people and so but for him to lie about that and pretend to be something else would have made him not a great artist, but to accept it and embrace it and celebrate it in his art, he becomes a symbol of, you know, ironically and iconically of all the people in America, you know,'cause that's what America's about.

Presenter15:24

And when you were in art class and you were sitting the exams, y were you painting the sort of still lives of the gourds and the Grecian busts like everybody else, or were you doing something very different?

Damien Hirst15:33

Well, I got I got an E in my A level up.

Presenter15:35

Yes, I didn't know whether to bring that up because I think it's quite a cheap shot. I'm proud of that. Are you? Okay.

Damien Hirst15:37

So I'm quite proud of that. Are you, okay. I quite like that, yeah. I think getting an E is quite difficult. It's not an F, which is a fail.

Damien Hirst15:43

You know, I was taking canvases on the bus to school, which for my art class big, you know, eight foot canvases.

Presenter15:48

Was that a bit of a pose, though? I mean, that's a little bit like carrying the Camus novel, isn't it, under your arm? This is who I am.

Damien Hirst15:50

Yeah.

Damien Hirst15:54

Yeah, totally, yeah. By the time I was seventeen I was, you know, I totally thought I was Willem Decooning or Mike Rothko or something, so I was throwing paint around and I couldn't be bothered with drawing. And then part of the exam was you had to do a still life drawing, so I did that, but I didn't really put a lot of effort in. I think that's what got me the E.

Presenter16:07

When we think of you as an artist, we think of somebody who has made their name by operating out with the normal confines of the rules. When you were a teenager, were you like that? I mean, were you somebody who didn't do it the way other people did it?

Damien Hirst16:18

No, I mean when thinking back I think because I was too young to be a proper punk.

Damien Hirst16:22

I think I really took all that attitude, but then realized that you you can't completely s you know, attack the system and subvert it, you've got to be more n manipulative. When I got into visual language, then I realized that there's an infinite number of ways to manipulate people into thinking what you want them to think. And it's like you can work within the rules, so

Damien Hirst16:38

You know, if you want to get a dead dog in a gallery and you want to shoot it with a shotgun, you then get R S P C A say you can't do that. You know, then you just start thinking of ways where you can get round all the things but still end up with something that's shocking.

Presenter16:49

Let's have some more music. Tell us what's next.

Damien Hirst16:51

So the fourth tune I'd choose is Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey by The Beatles, which was my seven-year-old son Cyrus's favourite tune. I think The Beatles always represented for me, growing up in public, if you look at the Beatles in the 70s and the Beatles in the 60s and the way that they changed, you know, there's no way they could have been in the 70s without being embarrassed about what they were in the 60s to some extent. And I think, you know, publicly that helped me with art and, you know, going through it and realising that it doesn't matter who you are, you've just got to be true to who you are.

Speaker 317:35

Take it.

Speaker 317:39

Might have got something to hide, death for me and my mom.

Presenter17:51

That was the Beatles, and everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey. So Damien Hurst, let's talk for a minute about the physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living. That is, of course, the title of the famous Sharkin formaldehyde. It was first exhibited in, I think it was 1992. It was commissioned by Charles Saatchi. What what was his brief to you for this piece?

Damien Hirst18:12

Well, I'd actually worked it out beforehand. You know, I just had an idea I wanted to do a shark in a gallery big enough to eat you. And I didn't let the fact I didn't have en money get in the way of the idea. So then I ju did lots of drawings and you know on the back of envelopes and beer mats and spoke to people who make tanks and I got a fabrication costing of how to make it and so I worked out as much as you could possibly do where I just needed money. So when Charles came along he just said have you got anything else you're working on? So I pulled all this out and showed him and he went, Let's make it. So in a way it was a commission but it was sort of you know he just plugged the cash into it. I think Charles was you know one of the greatest things that happened to contemporary art in England.

Damien Hirst18:46

Once I walked in this archer gallery for the first time I felt like I got snow blindness, it was so big. That was that was all I needed really was to see it that art was big and important.

Damien Hirst18:55

And w but w once I was in there, that was the only place I made art for. I probably still do.

Presenter18:59

And did you get into the tank and suspend it and pour the ferment? I mean, were you there in the middle of the

Damien Hirst19:03

In those days I did, yeah, before I got technicians and I used to get all my people who worked for me drunk as well, so it was

Damien Hirst19:09

Pretty chaotic in those days. Don't know how we managed it, really.

Presenter19:12

What's your most vivid memory of that period? You know, I mean, it was it was an explosive time for art, the sensation exhibition, front pages, you and Tracy Emon disgusting the traditional art world with what you were daring to call art.

Damien Hirst19:18

Exhibition function

Damien Hirst19:24

I mean, I just feel really lucky to have lived through those times. I mean, it's not I don't even have one memory really. I mean, every day you'd be going, Oh my god, I can't believe I've been asked to do this, you know, I mean in the beginning it was like the f all the galleries in New York were asking me to do shows. But to have come from kinda nowhere to that point, you know, we were really changing the the rules, you know.

Presenter19:44

Could you and I understand a lot of it was kind of there was a drunken haze surrounding it all, but do you remember a moment when you thought?

Presenter19:51

That's it, I've made it.

Damien Hirst19:53

There was one moment where I was on a train and I picked up a newspaper and I was a clue in a crossword. And I remember thinking, Oh my God, I've r totally entered the public consciousness in some way.

Presenter20:03

Is it true that Francis Bacon came to see A Thousand Years one of your installations exhibitions and really liked it?

Damien Hirst20:08

Yeah, we went to see that. I remember getting a phone call from the Sarchagara, and they told me that Francis Bacon had been in and seen it and spent an hour in front of it. And I remember thinking.

Presenter20:10

Yeah.

Damien Hirst20:17

Are they just saying that to make me

Damien Hirst20:20

happy, you know, in some way,'cause he was definitely my hero.

Presenter20:23

Let's have some more music. What are we going to hear now?

Damien Hirst20:24

This is a track called You Don't Know by Bob Andy. Um it was when I was sort of realizing that um drinking cocaine were becoming a bit of a problem. There's a bit in it where he says you don't know how you make your family feel. You're on cocaine and you're sort of strung out and so I remember thinking maybe I had a maybe I had a problem and I needed to do something about it.

Speaker 320:41

Don't go

Speaker 320:43

Uh

Speaker 320:45

You make your family feel To do the things you know are real Say the things you please They say you're in cocaine You should change your name

Speaker 321:04

They even say you're insane You don't know how

Speaker 321:11

You make your teachers feel.

Speaker 321:15

When you write the things you know

Speaker 321:18

Discuss the things you learn.

Speaker 321:22

They see you're dropping out You'll be a thief without a doubt

Presenter21:30

That was Bob Andy and You Don't Know Damien Hurst. For many years I read that at the Groucho Club in Soho you didn't pay your bill across the counter. They used to send your bill home, your bar bill, monthly. It was so big.

Damien Hirst21:41

Uh

Damien Hirst21:41

No, I think they did that with everybody. I mean yeah, yeah, everybody used to do that. I love the way these myths come out there. Yeah, but my but my bill was definitely, definitely, definitely b very, very big.

Presenter21:43

Oh, did they?

Presenter21:45

Yeah.

Presenter21:47

Yeah, but my but my pill was

Presenter21:51

How much would a weekly bar bill at the Groucho Club have been for you?

Damien Hirst21:54

I don't know, but I remember when I won the Turner Prize, Brian Eno gave me the cheque on stage and uh the next day I woke up and I didn't have it and I had to phone up everyone and I couldn't find it and then the Groucher Club said I'd put it behind the bar and bought everyone drinks. How big was that check? That's twenty grand.

Presenter22:06

Eggless.

Presenter22:08

Right, that's a good night then. Um so when did you have your last drink?

Damien Hirst22:11

Uh, six years ago, s November ninth was when I stopped. I was trying to stop for ages, but I kind of just kept trying and kept failing and kept trying and kept failing. I'd mixed drinks, notoriously. I'd look at all the drinks and think which one of those haven't I had? Which colour haven't I had? But the last time I did it, I thought, damn, two weeks after I'd had the drink, I didn't have a ricard, which was a great drink I used to love drinking, so I drank sort of everything last time I had a drink, but I didn't drink a ricard, and I still regret it. But you know, if you're not celebrating, you're escaping, and it's that's that's when it turns a bit nasty.

Damien Hirst22:42

I mean, I th I I tr I looked about and I think it was about fourteen when I started drinking. You know, I was drinking bottles of cider up down behind the electric pylon with with the mate, we'd go buy two bottles of cider and sort of drink it in one. So then I I kind of uh all the socializing and things like that I always did drunk, you know, if I'd turn up to a dinner or, you know, I mean I I saw recently myself at the Turner Prize getting the

Damien Hirst23:01

Getting the Turner Prize, and I was out of my mind drunk. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, slurring my words.

Presenter23:03

That's nineteen ninety five, isn't it?

Presenter23:06

When you look at that, what what do you think apart from oh, I'm obviously drunk?

Damien Hirst23:10

It makes me cringe, but everybody else looks at it and they don't really do the you know, you ca they say you can't see it, but I mean it does for me.

Presenter23:11

But everybody else.

Presenter23:15

Do you have to have different friends? Do you have to have different weekends? Do you have different evenings out in terms of what you do now compared to the six years ago after November the ninth?

Damien Hirst23:24

Not now,'cause I've l uh but I had, you know, I had to learn everything. I had to learn to be sober, I had to learn to socialize, I had to learn to be in public situations, you know, especially like being Damien Hurst was difficult. And then I had to learn to you know, sex, I had to relearn it. You used to think, My God, what's this? You know,'cause I'd like I'd had sex like totally drunk for years.

Presenter23:43

You used that phrase just then, being Damien Hurst, as though that's something you have to choose to engage with. I'm going out tonight and I'm being Damien Hurst. Can you unpack it a bit for me and explain more about that?

Damien Hirst23:52

It's not who you are, it's what you represent to people. And it's important what you represent to people.

Presenter23:57

What do you think you represent, culturally?

Damien Hirst24:00

Um, culturally? I don't know. I mean, I thi I think it's really important for me, you know, for art students to think I'm cool,'cause it's like you can I've met a lot of artists and some of them are cool and a lot of them are not. And you kinda think it's a shame'cause they represent something really important that when you're a student you see that and you go, It's great, but then when you actually meet them you actually think, No, you don't, that's just all, you know, bullshit.

Presenter24:20

So it's important for them to think you're cool and they will think you're cool if you are what.

Damien Hirst24:24

If you are true to yourself. My old business manager, Frank Dumphy, said something to me a long time ago, which was you've always got to make sure that the money has been used to chase the art and not the art to chase the money.

Damien Hirst24:34

And I think that's the sort of crux of it really.

Presenter24:37

Let's have some more music. We're only uh six of the morning.

Damien Hirst24:40

In art, you know, there's you know, there's expressionism where you talk about your feelings and your emotions and how you're feeling and you go, This is me but then there's other songs and and music which is about the structure of language. And I think the song Ian Brown, Fear, is one of those songs

Damien Hirst24:54

I mean I made two paintings called Fantastic Expectations and Amazing Revelations which is F E A R.

Damien Hirst25:00

And so I thought it's great to think that you can actually sing a song that's not about yourself, it's about its own language. So I chose that.

Speaker 325:08

Each

Speaker 325:12

Relay.

Speaker 325:16

Face everybody a room

Speaker 325:23

Everything I want for

Speaker 325:28

Forget everything

Speaker 325:32

For everything we

Presenter25:37

That was Ian Brown and Fear. I read, Damien Hurst, that in 2005 you bought a place called Toddington Manor in Gloucestershire with 300 rooms and 124 acres of land. I've just worked out, because you've told me how long you've been sober now, you were still drinking when you bought it and I just wondered if your judgment was clouded by how much you'd had to drink. I don't think so. That's quite a commitment.

Damien Hirst25:54

One two

Damien Hirst26:01

It was definitely not what I was looking for. There's an old ruin of an original manor on there which I've done up and um protected. When I bought it the rain was like coming in through the roof and it was rotting and falling apart.

Presenter26:11

How much have you spent on it, if you don't mind me asking?

Damien Hirst26:14

Oof, I don't know, millions. I've got a new business manager who, when he first started working with me, I was talking about spending a million a year on it. And then my business manager said to me, Um, you don't mind me asking, for how long are you going to be spending a million on it? And we'd never even addressed that. It was just sort of free r wandering projects with no end in sight. So that's when we stopped working on it.

Presenter26:28

Yeah.

Presenter26:33

Will you live in it at some point?

Damien Hirst26:35

Um I c my idea is to do it as a museum where I'll place lots of artwork with kind of curiosities and strange things. And then I thought in my lifetime, you know, I'd have a few rooms so I could take people there and live there while I'm alive.

Presenter26:46

Right, so it would be your legacy is the idea.

Damien Hirst26:47

Yeah, I'd then the rooms that I'd lived in would would get art put in as well and it becomes a museum.

Presenter26:52

As your mum been rounded?

Damien Hirst26:53

Yeah, my mum's been running, but we have summer parties there for my staff.

Presenter26:57

They about it.

Damien Hirst26:58

Yeah.

Damien Hirst26:59

I don't know, she loves that. I never really asked her actually directly what she thinks about it. Maybe are you sure you can afford it?

Presenter27:06

Your collection of art is impressive and substantial. Tell me about the pieces that you've collected that are your favourites.

Damien Hirst27:13

Um, I mean, you know, I've got I've got a lot of artworks. I mean, I've got things that were given to me as well. I mean, I everything means something to me for different reasons, really. I mean, I've got, you know, five Francis Bacon paintings which are, you know, and things that I c would only dream about ever owning.

Presenter27:26

And when you look at them, apart from appreciating them artist to artist.

Presenter27:31

They probably represent more than anything the the extraordinary lifetime journey you've made from this boy who was sort of throwing paint at Foxfur's in his dad's garage. What do you feel when you look at them? Nothing.

Damien Hirst27:39

What do you feel when

Damien Hirst27:41

Well, I think I've kind of realised th through being in the amazing position to kind of live with art like that, you know, I used to get on the train to go visit an exhibition of bacon, you know, I'd be interrailing with mates to go to Paris to the Pompidou to see like a dacooning show or something like that and then you'd you only get a few minutes in front of a painting, whoever you are, no matter how much money you've got. So I think for me to have paintings in my house like that and to be able to look at them continually over a a year, I mean it made me sort of realize that you just see so much more. I mean I've got a T V in my T V room and I've got a bacon on the wall next to it and I often when I'm watching T V look at the bacon and look back at the T V. And with the bacons as well, they're always on loan and I feel really bad if I don't loan them because you think there are loads of students who should be looking at this. I kind of feel guilty having it to myself.

Presenter28:23

At let's have your seventh of the morning. What are we going to hear?

Damien Hirst28:25

So next is is uh Joe Strummer, who I said before was a mate of mine. He asked me to do his album cover for this album that he did with his band The Mescaleros.

Damien Hirst28:33

And uh the album's called Rock Art and the X-Ray Style. And the X-Ray Style is an aboriginal cave painting.

Damien Hirst28:40

where they drew inside two-dimensional people we can see inside the animals and it's called X-ray style.

Damien Hirst28:46

Yeah. Oh

Speaker 328:46

On a live

Speaker 328:49

That's a wow, don't make like it

Speaker 328:55

On Morocco Village Man

Speaker 328:59

Don't worry about the blue

Speaker 329:02

Blow my ball and chain

Speaker 329:07

You can't pull a hold up with a bee-bop gun

Speaker 329:14

There's people living now, they've got no part and they never had none

Presenter29:21

Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros and X-ray style. And so you're the father of three sons. Your eldest is going to be eighteen. Your youngest, I think, is around about seven.

Speaker 329:28

Yeah.

Presenter29:30

Your life is so far removed from the life that you lived as a little boy growing up in Leeds, or at least it would seem to me that way from the outside. Do you try to somehow make it the same kind of experience?

Damien Hirst29:41

I mean, I don't think you can, you know. I mean, I've got to help them, you know, be the son of Damien Hurst. I mean, I've always thought that, you know, it's much more important to have dad written on your gravestone than artist. You know, it doesn't matter how big the numbers get or how important the art becomes or what museums want to buy it. You just want to end up making sure that you still communicate and have a good relationship with your kids and they're first and fore foremost. Have you always felt like that, or is that something that you're sort of coming to in your middle years? Well, not really. I mean, a lot of it was to do when I gave up drinking, you know. It's like when I was drinking, I th I thought I was the greatest dad in the world, but you know, looking back at it, I mean, even now I remember things and behaviours and things that were, you know.

Damien Hirst30:18

I mean, you know, you're selfish without realizing it really when you're drinking a lot.

Presenter30:21

During the crazy years, did your mother ever try to sit you down and say to you, This you know, this is you're going to hell on a hand cart here, son?

Damien Hirst30:24

So this is

Presenter30:28

No, I mean that's the

Damien Hirst30:29

I don't know, I think my mum probably preferred me when I was drinking.

Damien Hirst30:33

I mean, she did say to me in a car once, What's the pr problem or something and I just and I remember blurting out, I'm well on the way to becoming an alcoholic and a drug addict and that was the point when I'd actually said it where I thought, Right, okay, that's it, you just gotta do something about it now And, you know, luckily so far touch wood, it worked.

Presenter30:50

Um you've been obsessed with death to some extent or another since you were a young boy. You know, we talked about your grandmother dying and you know the various different subjects uh matter of your art throughout the decades.

Damien Hirst30:56

Okay.

Presenter31:02

What do you hope people will say about Damien Hurst the Artist when you're gone?

Damien Hirst31:08

Um, you kinda make art, I've always thought, for people who haven't been born yet. So you just hope that it makes sense and it hope that it gives a glimpse into the world that we lived in, that I've lived in, that you wouldn't see in any other way. I mean, the hope is that it's relevant, because a lot of art doesn't end up in the museum, it ends up in the museum storage covered in cobwebs, you know.

Presenter31:28

Let's have your final piece of music, Damien Hurst. Your eighth track. What is it?

Damien Hirst31:31

It's The Stone Roses I Am the Resurrection.

Presenter31:34

Why choose the

Damien Hirst31:34

And uh I always wanted to meet the Beatles and I think the Stone Roses are like the Beatles and the the greatest track of theirs is I Am the Resurrection.

Speaker 331:41

Don't waste your words, I don't need anything from you.

Speaker 331:48

I don't care where you've been or what you plan to do.

Speaker 331:57

I am the resurrection

Speaker 332:07

Hate you as I

Presenter32:15

I am the resurrection, the stone roses. So, Damien Hurst, I will give you the books. You get the Bible, and you get the complete works of Shakespeare to take to this island, and then you take along the book of your own as well. What are you going to take?

Damien Hirst32:26

There's a few books I was thinking, but I think in in the end I have to go for a book that was given to me by Richard Hamilton.

Presenter32:27

The f

Damien Hirst32:32

The artist who's d died last year. It's a transcript of the Large Glass by Marcel Duchamp, but it's something that he made. So it's his analysis of what Duchamp was thinking and about when he made The Large Glass. The Large Glass is one of the greatest pieces of art by Duchamp. And I think, you know, as you get to the to my age, I started to think that, you know, maybe I should be working on something like that, rather than making a painting after painting after painting so you can sell.

Damien Hirst32:57

To work on something that's more of a lifetime's work, you know, which is what he did. It was c it's called The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, even.

Presenter33:04

Right, we'll give you that then to take. And your luxury too. What would you like?

Damien Hirst33:08

Well I thought about taking some art as a luxury item and the first thing I thought was to take my bacon painting, the figure at the base of a crucifixion. But then I thought on a desert island or in a cave you kind of think it sort of starts to be a bit fragile, you couldn't look after it really, you know, there's no climate control environment, sort of fall to bits. But then I thought I would like some art, so then I thought of another sculpture which is by an artist called Roger Heowns called Untitled 2009. And it's of two car engines hung on a metal frame and they're dipped and soaked in copper sulphate crystals. So they probably grow quite well in a you know salty environment. And it's contemporary art and it's harking back to the past, so I'd take that.

Presenter33:47

Uh

Damien Hirst33:47

Right.

Presenter33:48

That's your luxury. And of course, you're allowed to save one disk from the waves if they were to threaten to wash away your disks. Which one would you save?

Damien Hirst33:55

I think I'd have to choose the Joe Strummer track.

Presenter33:59

Okay, that's

Damien Hirst33:59

The Mescalero's X-ray style.

Presenter34:01

That's yours. Damien Hirst, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Damien Hirst34:04

Thank you.

Presenter34:23

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.