At last, Hirst admits that some of his art is 'silly and embarrassing'

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The Independent
By Louise Jury, Arts Correspondent and Claudia Parsons
30 March 2005


There were always those who argued that the pickled sheep and carved cows that made Damien Hirst a household name were not exactly high art. But now the one-time enfant terrible of British art has joined his critics and admitted that some of his creations may have been somewhat "silly" and "embarrassing".

Speaking at the opening of his latest exhibition at the Gagosian gallery in New York, Hirst, 39, said: "You do turn round after a few years and look at your stuff and you think it's embarrassing. Certainly everything you make is not a masterpiece."

His spin paintings - round works created by dropping paint onto a spinning canvas - were "a bit silly," he said. "The cut in half pig that moves like a bacon slicer I suppose I thought was a bit silly in retrospect."

But that does not, of course, mean he is any less certain of his stature in the pantheon of artistic greats. Admitting to the occasional moments of silliness comes only a few weeks after he told Modern Painters magazine: "There's a chair up there in art heaven with my name on, and I could go and sit next to Jackson Pollock and do nothing."
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