Damien Hirst compares himself to an architect

In advance of the opening of his multi-gallery exhibition titled The Complete Spot Paintings, 1986–2011, Damien Hirst made an appearance on the Charlie Rose Show to talk about his spot paintings and this exhibition. The show is taking place at all eleven Gagosian Galleries (with locations in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong), and they all opened on January 12th.

One of the more-interesting questions came when Charlie Rose asked about the issue that Damien Hirst doesn’t actually execute most of his art these days, and Hirst had an interesting response: “architects don’t build their own houses, do they?” What surprised me about this answer was that it actually seemed like a valid one. One can think that art is about the artist creating an object, and perhaps a romantic notion of the inspiration coming from the soul. This is what one thinks when considering Van Gogh, Matisse, de Kooning, and so forth. But let’s flip it over to the architect idea: people love Frank Gehry’s buildings, they all have a distinct look that expresses his creative genius. But he’s not on-site welding beams together or hammering nails into wood, is he? Of course not, so why would it be so bad that Hirst comes up with the concept, the artistic idea, and have someone else paint it?