Interview

AHG: Let's look at your career a bit. You told Sean O'Hagan of The Guardian, "I've made maybe four good pieces and the rest are, you know, sort of happy." I thought that was quite courageousconsidering it was before the auction. Do you believe it?

DH: It depends where you are looking from. You can be brutal. I used to watch Top of the Pops when I was a kid and say "Yeah!" or "Boo!" at every single song. So there was nothing in the middle. You brutally put it on one side or another. If you want to be brutal, I think there are those four pieces that stand above the rest. But you can draw that line anywhere you want.

AHG: When I first saw those pieces they reminded me of some Victorian paintings. They are about life and death. The big issues. Like the insect-o-cutor piece.

DH: Yes. That's a killer piece, isn't it? God knows where that came from. It's one of those crazy things that happen early . . . .

AHG: You have no idea where that came from?

DH: I was pretty down at the time. I was feeling I had to make a piece about something important. Really I was very young to be making something like that. I mean, when I made it, it kind of scared me. I set the whole thing up. I stood back and I felt maybe this is how Oppenheimer might have felt when he split the atom. Because these are living things. I was really worried when the first flies got killed by it. You could feel the pain in it. You think, "Should I be doing this with art? Should I be going in this direction?" It was really quite weird. But it had a kind of beauty about it. I still think that's the greatest piece that I made.

AHG: And that's the piece Bacon went to see?

DH: Yes. That's the one Bacon spoke about. I haven't got the letter, but I've seen it. The letter was to Louis le Brocquy [the Irish painter]. But I've still got the piece! I sold it to Charles Saatchi and then bought it back off him.

AHG: You described the auction as drawing a line across your work. No more butterflies. No more spin paintings. What brought this on? You had this incredible machine, a very successful machine. Did it get to be too much?

DH: No. I've just stopped some things. I'm not slowing down. I just felt I'd gotten to the end of it really. I don't know. 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. It's not the shit going on in the back of the wings-it was never real. So I've always been looking for a way to get to the end of it. And then as I got older it has made less and less sense to me. And I just felt this auction was a good way to end things. But like I said . . . I'm doing some very small spots. So it seems to be taking another direction. So I'll do those. But even with those I think I'll do something else quite soon as well. I'm doing these . . . [Hirst's voice lowers. He sounds almost abashed. He is looking at the wall behind me.] paintings. [I turn. Two paintings are hanging. They are tall, narrow. Small vivid dots are urgent, spluttery, bright white, not geo-perfect in any way, against a Prussian blue background. On the right one, there is a small skull facing the viewer frontally. On the left the image is of a skull and spine, as if taken from an X-ray. Both are clearly hand-painted.]

AHG: There was nothing like that in the auction.

DH: No. Because it's not happening yet. I'm working out what to do with it.

AHG: The first time we talked on the record, we talked about painting. But since then you've said that you stopped making paintings at age 15, when you saw Bacon and turned to sculpture.

DH: Yeah.

AHG: Did you know that Bacon was going to make sculpture? He got a frame like a Zimmer frame. A Bacon frame. Peter Beard told me he thought that the Marlborough Galleries talked him out of it.

DH: Really? Wow! [pause] Probably a good idea.

AHG: That he didn't do it?

DH: Yeah. But you never know. I've looked at his print sheets, and they're not too bad. They're just like paintings, aren't they?

AHG: What are you working on now? Sometimes you talk about interesting tech ideas, like suspending droplets of water in sonic beams. But then you're talking about going into the shed and getting a grip on painting.

DH: Yeah, yeah. I think I'll do both. I'm actually employing more people. Even though I've stopped some of the series.

AHG: How many people now?

DH: Uh, I dunno . . . 160? Something like that.

AHG: In how many work locations?

DH: I think I've got six studios. Six, yeah. But mainly the one in Gloucestershire. It's just kind of expanded. We take on more and more people as we go.

AHG: But these look like pieces you are making yourself? [Meaning the paintings behind me.]

DH: Yes. I make these on my own.

AHG: This is really encouraging. [Hirst laughs] You may laugh. But I was wondering where you were going to go, you know.

DH: Yeah. Paint! I also thought I couldn't imagine the work getting me to the end of my life. If I were going to live for a lot longer, you know. [pause] I was looking at photographs of Jeff Koons. And the smile starts to crack. Do you know what I mean? As you get older . . . And it is about celebration. He made that great series, "Celebration." In a lot of the work I was celebrating. And you stop celebrating. But the work still is celebrating. It doesn't make sense.

AHG: What do you mean, you stop celebrating?

DH: You just get a bit older. I used to walk into a room and get on the table and go, "Hee-hah!" I used to believe I was going to live forever. And then you suddenly become aware that you're not. You're celebrating the fact that nothing can stop you. You're going to fuck everyone! You can't lose! Like, "Fuck off, this is what I think." You're kind of like that and celebrating every moment in that way. And then suddenly . . . I've got kids. It's just gone somehow. You're not like that anymore. You've gone quiet. You're more cautious. You can walk into the studio one day and just think, This is not me, you know? And especially if you're doing an endless series. Someone like On Kawara, I mean, I wonder if he ever does that? Like, "Fuck! I've just wasted all these years and it's not me." He must. It's artistic doubt.

AHG: Or Daniel Buren.

DH: Exactly. Anybody who's done that kind of thing.

AHG: There were some great pieces in the auction. But there were some pieces, like the spot painting with a gold background, where I didn't feel much soul-beating.

DH: Yeah! I think that's why it's sort of an end to me. I don't know, you kind of . . . I quite like that logo thing as well. I've got a company called Over the Sofa. I've always thought at the end of the day art just goes over the fucking sofa. You can't take it too seriously.

AHG: Let's talk about celebrity. Picasso was a celebrity, but he was very wary of it, and it didn't get into his art. It ate up Dalí. Then there was Andy. But it seems to me that you've taken it a step further. You have actually made it into an art material. You have used fame and money as icon painters used to use gold.

DH: Yes. It is an ingredient, I think, in the composition. Especially money. Or power. And all of those things. Even not having it. I mean, it's important to people who don't have it. It's something that's not to be underestimated or overestimated. A lot of what I did is "What if?" I wonder what would happen if we do this and not that? There are no limits really, are there? But you can get yourself into some awkward situations where maybe you didn't want to be. I had no money when I was young, so I think that forced me . . . and also Frank [Dunphy], my business manager. He's totally on my side. He only works with me.

AHG: He worked with Tim [Noble] and Sue [Webster], didn't he?

DH: He's worked with them. But nobody sort of took it that one step further. Nobody took him on. Because you have to give away a bit in order to get there. Remember, I was on 50-50 with Jay [Jopling]. And then, when Frank came along, I had to go to 40 percent because I had to give Frank 10 percent. So it was 50 to Jay, 40 to me, 10 to Frank. So that was awkward. But I had the foresight to do that . . . Now, fundamentally, it's problematic going under 50.

AHG: I was going through the auction catalogues and cuttings and stuff in a magazine office. Somebody asked why, and I said I was off to interview you. One girl squealed and said, "Can I come and hold your tape recorder?" And these are sophisticated people. Jackson Pollock didn't get that kind of response. Probably not even Picasso got that kind of response. It's partly because of our celebrity-mad times, but I think it's also partly because of the changes that you and a few others have made in the art world.

DH: I quite like what happens when you make the kind of money that we made in the auction. Because money does talk. There are a lot of people who like money but who don't like art. And when you see that . . . I love that.

AHG: Objectively, it's not that much money. People seem to think it's remarkable that an artist should make as much money as a footballer, or an actor who is at roughly the same career level.

DH: Somebody offered me a Picasso painting the other day for $140 million. You just go, "Thank God for that! Thank God the value's there at that level." It means there's a long way to go.

AHG: Where are you going to hang it?

DH: No. I didn't buy it.

AHG: That was a joke.

DH: Yeah. I didn't buy it. But I would!

AHG: I hear you have a Bacon in your play room. Is it the self-portrait?

DH: In my TV room? No. It's the scene at the base of the Crucifixion. 1944.