DESIGN FETISH: Damien Hirst Profile on Aarting.com

Simon Hattenstone:

Damien Hirst stares into his portrait of a skull. This is the new Damien Hirst – Hirst the solitary painter rather than Hirst the art world’s flamboyant marketing magician. He has painted these pictures with his own hands, rather than employed minions to produce work under his name, as he has done in the past. But, he says, this is also the old Hirst. After all, like most artists, he started out painting rather than conceptualising and mass-producing. “I gave up painting by 16,” he says. “I secretly thought I would have been Rembrandt by then.”

I give him a look. But Rembrandt was a genius?

He shakes his head. “No, I don’t believe in genius. I believe in freedom. I think anyone can do it. Anyone can be like Rembrandt.”