DH-
Life is fucking important and so art can never be important, because art’s holding a mirror up to life. You can’t live and die in a painting and you can’t live and die in a sculpture. Art is definitely lesser than life, so it has to have some sort of illusion built into it. The illusion’s built into the beginning. If children are fucking starving to death, you don’t want to look at fucking paintings. That’s what I mean. The art comes in, it’s important, but it comes in after, it’s not fundamentally important. When the guns come out, no one’s got the paintings on the wall. I just love the fact that in painting you deal with the illusion straight away. There’s no fucking depth in a space where there isn’t any? It’s just a lie. Unless at some point you put paintings on the wall and people go, “Wow, I never knew you had a window there.” Did that ever happen? Did you ever paint a landscape because you were in a dark room and people thought you had a window?
damien hirst: new paintings ,sept-oct 2009 C-arts mag
,interview by alexander boldizar
(holy crap, the whole thing’s, PLUS MORE GEMS, online. thanks, j.k.)
*(oh and there’s totally more to come. don’t think i was going to let you off this easy right.)
(oh and my other hirst thing..)
(oh and : )
Filed under: life-without-art