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Damien Hirst has admitted that he used treat property “a bit like Monopoly” and would even buy the villas he stayed in each time he went on holiday.
The artist who was once at the centre of the “Brit Pack” scene of the Nineties – also referred to as the Young British Artists or YBAs – is believed to be the UK’s richest living artist, and in 2020 was reported to have a net worth of more than £315m.
In a rare new interview, Hirst apparently struggled to name where “home” for him was, in part because his eldest three sons are living in his Devon farmhouse. Other properties he owns are in Mayfair, Richmond and the Cotswolds.
“I used to buy everything,” the 60-year-old told The Times. “It was a bit like Monopoly – when you land on it, you buy it. Every time I went on holiday, I’d buy the villa I was staying in.”
He said he spends less time now in Mexico, where he also owns several properties, because his girlfriend of eight years, former ballerina Sophie Cannell, “hates spiders”.
“We get tarantulas, scorpions,” he said. “I even had a crocodile in the pool, so that’s off the cards.”
Hirst readily admitted that he likes money: “I just think [it’s] an important thing in the world that we live in,” he said. “You must keep up with the market and avoid making loads of work that never sells.”
In 2022, Hirst sparked controversy when he burned a number of works from his first NFT collection, The Currency, which collectively were estimated to be worth almost £10m.
"A lot of people think I'm burning millions of dollars of art but I'm not," Hirst said at the time. "I'm completing the transformation of these physical artworks into NFTs by burning the physical versions.
“The value of art, digital or physical, which is hard to define at the best of times will not be lost; it will be transferred to the NFT as soon as they are burnt.”
Elsewhere, Hirst claimed that he turned down a knighthood after being approached about the idea of accepting one by banker and art collector Jacob Rothschild, who died in February last year.
“They’re very clever – they don’t really offer it to you before getting someone to sound you out,” Hirst said.
Rothschild, a British peer who was known as a prominent champion of the arts, apparently rang Hirst one day and offered him a CBE (Commander of the British Empire).
When he rejected that, the idea of a KBE (Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire) was floated, but Hirst claimed he again declined after consulting with his manager.
“I never felt comfortable with the idea,” he said.
Hirst currently has two shows at the Newport Street Gallery in London, titled “Raging Planet” and “The Power and the Glory”. Both were curated by his son, Connor, and comprise what The Independent’s critic Mark Hudson described in his review as “the more niche allures of the Hirst collection”.
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