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Home > Art & Design > The South Bank Show - Damien Hirst: Addicted to Art

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The South Bank Show - Damien Hirst: Addicted to Art

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Damien Hirst: Addicted to Art. The popular and controversial artist talks about his collections, and opens his studio in Gloucestershire to show how he works.

Melvyn Bragg and Damien Hirst
Producer and Director
Lucy Allen

Editor and Presenter
Melvyn Bragg

This episode of The South Bank Show provides a unique insight into Damien Hirst not as the enfant terrible of an art world but as an art collector and businessman.

Hirst was the main catalyst and front man for the vibrant Brit Art scene of the 1990s, but his interests have always stretched far beyond producing art. Known for creating one of the most famous icons of modern art, a 14ft tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde, which shocked the public, he also produces decorative spot and spin paintings. His prolific output and entrepreneurialism have made him one of the world's most expensive living artists, with an estimated fortune of £100 million. He has become a global brand, the controller of an expanding business empire and a major art collector.

One of Hirst's motivations for his growing art collection is Toddington, a dilapidated Gothic Manor house in Gloucestershire, which he purchased in 2005 for £3 million and will one day house his entire collection. Here, he shows Melvyn Bragg around Toddington, outlining his plans for its future. They discuss his art collection, his artistic heroes and the relationship between money and art.

A tour of the exhibition of some of his collection at The Serpentine Galllery - In the Darkest Hour There May Be Light - provides a look at a different side to Hirst. It is an eclectic mix of work by artists of his own generation (Sarah Lucas, Angus Fairhurst, Marcus Harvey, Tracey Emin); his American contemporaries (John Currin, Richard Prince, Michael Joo); his artistic heroes (Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons) and unknown younger artists. In recent years he has built up an art collection estimated to be worth millions of pounds. He describes buying art as an addiction and a way of coming to terms with his own increasingly high prices. He has recently bought a significant painting by Francis Bacon, his childhood hero, A Study for a Figure at the Base of a Crucifixion which will be on display. The film also shows Hirst at work in one of his studios in Gloucestershire with his assistants, where he describes himself as an architect producing high-end products.

Contributors include Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, Jeff Koons and Damien's business manager Frank Dunphy.

Melvyn Bragg and Damien HirstWatch: The South Bank Show - Damien Hirst: Addicted to Art

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Sat 4 February 2012, 6:25

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