on june 26, 2018, artist damien hirst posted a picture of himself on instagram, wearing only his pink underwear and socks, and surrounded by some of his ‘veil’ paintings. the post asked his 449k followers to come up with the best caption for one of the prints hirst recently released with london’s heni editions, and whichever answer rose to the artist’s standards was to win that print. turns out brief and obscene does the trick for hirst’s first-ever instagram competition, as the chosen caption is, simply, ‘twat’.

 

images courtesy of damien hirst and heni editions

 

 

called andromeda, the print is part of a series of four, released with heni editions to support london’s serpentine galleries. days after posting the picture, hirst commented: ’I’ve read so many replies to my dumbass competition I’m losing my fucking marbles, what was I thinking having a fucking competition anyway!?’ the winning caption came from a user who goes by the name @beigebrick, who’s answer simply wrote ‘twat’. ‘in the end I had to pick it as the winner because of its simplicity’, mentioned the british artist, ‘and because if you can’t laugh at yourself you’re fucked.’ other captions that caught hirst’s attention include @baodraws’ ‘my girlfriend just caught me blowdrying me penis and asked what i was doing – apparently “heating your dinner” was not the right answer,’ on which the artist mentioned, ‘I wanted to pick this one too because it’s fucking funny but it’s not inventive as it’s an old joke and maybe too fucking sexist for this fucked up instagram world ?’. on @helloraychan’s caption ‘it’s taken years for you to paint your own – how long will it take to write your own bloody captions?’,  the artist, who is known to have relied on numerous assistants over the years, only wrote ‘nice’. he listed other captions he found good ones by various users, such as ‘que seurat seurat’, ‘the devil wears nada’, ‘I pink, therefore I am’, and ‘jackson bollocks’, which he liked ‘because it’s very british with a hint of america.’