Creativity Quote by Damien Hirst

Hirst is arguing for titles as part of the artwork’s delivery system, not an afterthought slapped on to satisfy a label maker. Coming from an artist whose practice has always been entangled with branding, spectacle, and the museum as a marketplace, the line reads less like precious literary advice and more like a shrewd understanding of how meaning gets packaged and sold. A single-word title can feel like a shrug: decorative, evasive, safely “open.” Hirst is pushing against that polite vagueness. If you’re going to name it, he suggests, you may as well take responsibility for steering the viewer’s attention.

The subtext is that titles are leverage. They frame the encounter, guiding interpretation before the eye has even settled. Hirst’s best-known works practically prove the point: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living doesn’t just identify a shark in formaldehyde; it scripts the viewer’s psychological role, turning a look into an existential test. In that sense, the long title isn’t extra; it’s the concept made portable, a line the audience carries with them, a headline that circulates.

There’s also a faint provocation here: art-world ambiguity can be a pose, a way to dodge accountability while sounding profound. Hirst’s bluntness flips that. He’s saying: don’t hide behind minimalism. Say something, even if what you’re saying is an argument about death, commerce, or your own complicity in the attention economy.