Wealth & Money Quote by Damien Hirst

Hirst frames capitalism as a self-licking ice cream cone: the moment the money arrives, it gets eaten by scale. On the surface he sounds almost bashful, like success is an accident that keeps getting corrected by logistics. Underneath is the sharper confession that his art isn t just made in a studio; it s manufactured inside a market where size, spectacle, and expense are part of the medium.

The line works because it s both a joke and a dodge. He pretends the barrier to wealth is practical (big work costs big money), not moral or aesthetic. Yet that practicality is the point: in Hirst s world, production value is not a regrettable side effect, it s a credential. Tanks for sharks, vitrines, assistants, fabrication teams, shipping, insurance, storage, handlers, the whole apparatus of contemporary art becomes the hidden subject of the work. He s describing an economy where the artwork is inseparable from the infrastructure that keeps it rare, monumental, and tradable.

Context matters: Hirst rose with the Young British Artists in the 1990s, when shock, branding, and savvy patronage made notoriety convertible into price. His quote gently mocks the fantasy that artists either sell out or stay pure. Instead, he suggests the system absorbs profit by demanding escalation. The subtext is almost bleak: you don t get to cash out, because the market rewards you for reinvesting in a bigger myth of yourself.