People think they are not allowed to laugh at art, but they are. Damien Hirst laughs at himself. I know Jake and Dinos Chapman and they laugh all the time at what they do and at other artists.
Take Damien Hirst out of contemporary art history, and there's an incredible void. Great artists, like great people, have second acts.
Damien Hirst is the Elvis of the English art world, its ayatollah, deliverer, and big-thinking entrepreneurial potty-mouthed prophet and front man. Hirst synthesizes punk, Pop Art, Jeff Koons, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Bacon, and Catholicism.
I don't ever see movies by myself. I always see them with other people because I want to know what works. I want to know where they laugh. I want to know where they don't laugh. I want to know what they think about it afterwards because in the end that's what the art that I'm working with is.
Catharsis isn't art. You can't rely on catharsis to get a laugh. Because guess what? People do laugh when something's shocking, but that is, to me, the absolute fakest of laughs. That's not something that sustains a television series, or a movie, or even 45 minutes of a stand-up set at Carolines.
I'm a massive fan of Brit Art in general and Damien Hirst in particular. I think he's an absolute genius and should be celebrated in every way.
Isn't it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.
There's nothing wrong with making people laugh. We all need to laugh. Sometimes I get all these laughs inside of me, and there's no place to let 'em out.
Germans try to categorize films: in a comedy, you just laugh and in a drama, you're not allowed to laugh. I don't believe in that, sometimes we laugh and cry in the same hour.
I don't think there's ever an inappropriate time to laugh! I'm a curious person. So if someone laughs, I want to know why.
LAUGHTER is the very essence of religion. Seriousness is never religious, cannot be religious. Seriousness is of the ego, part of the very disease. Laughter is egolessness. Yes, there is a difference between when you laugh and when a religious man laughs. The difference is that you laugh always about others - the religious man laughs at himself, or at the whole ridiculousness of man's being. Religion cannot be anything other than a celebration of life.
When art is defined by Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, you've got a society that's impoverished.
I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don't laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that's not real laughter.
You hear that boy laughing?you think he's all fun; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done; The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all.
When you watch an audience watching my movies, you realize that nobody laughs at the same time. Some people enjoy a beat, and then another group of people are laughing at a sight gag, and then someone laughs where nobody laughs before. They're not timed like a comedy. You're not supposed to laugh at every joke. You decide.
When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
I'd rather be the bloke laughing at other people. I don't need to make people laugh. I surround myself with funny people. I laugh all the time.