Damien Hirst Calls His Manager Joe Hage His Biggest Influence, Then Likens Galleries to “Estate Agents”
Damien Hirst has never been shy about the machinery of the art world, but a recent podcast appearance offered an unusually candid map of where he believes power actually sits. Speaking on Waldy and Bendy’s Adventures in Art, the British artist Damien Hirst (b. 1965) named his manager, Joe Hage, as the most influential person he has ever met — and reserved his sharpest language for the dealer system that helped propel his rise.
Asked by co-host Waldemar Januszczak to identify the single most influential figure in his life, Hirst did not point to a curator, collector, or fellow artist. Instead, he credited Hage, describing him as a low-profile presence: “Joe Hage, my manager,” Hirst said, adding that Hage is “very quiet” and “lives in the shadows.”
Hirst emphasized Hage’s reach across the upper tiers of the market and the complex terrain of artist legacies. According to Hirst, Hage also manages German artist Gerhard Richter (b. 1932), handles the Francis Bacon estate, and represents Scottish painter Peter Doig (b. 1959). The list situates Hage not simply as an administrator but as a key intermediary between living artists, estates, and the institutions and collectors that shape reputations over decades.
The conversation then turned to Hirst’s own gallery relationships — and his tone shifted. Januszczak asked whether Hirst is still working with Gagosian and White Cube, two of the most influential commercial galleries in the contemporary field. Hirst replied that he is no longer certain “how that stuff works anymore,” suggesting a distance from the day-to-day mechanics of representation.
While he acknowledged that galleries “have a function,” Hirst framed that function in pointedly transactional terms. “They’re only estate agents,” he said, extending the metaphor with a jab at perceived overreach: “a lot of estate agents think they own everything because they have the keys to the house.”
The remarks land at a moment when the boundaries between primary-market representation, secondary-market dealing, and direct-to-collector sales have become increasingly porous — especially for artists with global name recognition and established collector bases. Hirst’s analogy, delivered with characteristic bluntness, underscores a long-running tension in the contemporary market: who controls access, and who ultimately controls the work.
Hirst also used the podcast to reveal a new project that points in a different direction — away from the public-facing gallery circuit and toward private patronage on a monumental scale. He disclosed that he has created a grotto encrusted with 150 tonnes of amethyst for Mark Getty, the younger son of John Paul Getty Jr. The commission was made for the Getty family’s Wormsley estate in southern England.
The image is quintessentially Hirst: theatrical, materially extravagant, and calibrated to the kind of immersive spectacle that reads as both luxury object and environment. While details about public access were not discussed, the project adds to a growing body of Hirst works that operate as destinations — installations designed for specific sites and specific patrons, where the experience is inseparable from the setting.
Taken together, Hirst’s comments sketch a portrait of an artist recalibrating his relationship to the structures that once defined his career. In his telling, the most consequential figure is not a dealer with a white cube, but a manager who “lives in the shadows” — and the newest work is not a gallery show, but a gemstone grotto embedded in an English estate.
