“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.”

English artist and art collector, born 1965

Damien Hirst is an English artist and art collector, associated with the Young British Artists who came to prominence in the United Kingdom in the 1990s. Born in 1965, he became one of the most visible figures of that period and remains closely identified with contemporary British art. His career was long linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, especially through the 1990s, before tensions between them surfaced in 2003 and the relationship ended. He is also reported to be the United Kingdom's richest living artist, with wealth estimated at US$384 million in the 2020 Sunday Times Rich List.