Damien Hurst creates headlines and buzz like few other living artists. This morning, Tracy Smith takes a deep dive into his work. How's this for a story? A few years back, the wreck of an ancient sailing ship, the Opi Stoes, was found off the coast of East Africa. The ship's name, Opi Stoes, translates as unbelievable in ancient Greek, and the cargo she carried was pretty unbelievable, indeed. Divers found treasure by the tonne, gold-plated sculptures, and huge bronze statues, crusted in coral. The salvagers packed it all off to Venice, where crowds marveled at the treasures of the unbelievable. And here's the thing, there really was no ancient shipwreck or any lost treasure, that whole undersea recovery was staged for this exhibit. And the sculptures on display in Venice weren't created by craftsmen in ancient Rome. They were all made here, at a foundry north of London, by millennials in matching coveralls. This is the archa. The treasure, and the made up story behind it, was yet another outrageous creation by British artist Damien Hurst. The idea is that all of these things would have been discovered as part of a shipwreck and they would have grown the whole coral. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but you wanted to look like it's real. You don't want to look like it's been man-made, the coral anyway. The coral might be fake, but the treasure's real enough. Most of these pieces have already sold, that prices reportedly up to $5 million each. At 53, Hurst has been described as a genius and a con man, but it's hard to argue with his success. An original work by Damien Hurst, like these spot paintings at New York's Gagosi in Gallery, could be worth more than your house, even though his staff might have done the actual painting. As soon as I could afford it, I had other people to make my paintings. Why? I just don't think it's important. What's important is that the end result is exactly what I want. Even if it's not your hands doing the work. Well, I mean, I feel like it is my hands doing the work. It doesn't matter whether I actually physically do the work or not, as long as I'm making sure that the end result is what I want. 1,150,000. And what he wants sells. Beautiful spot painting here. 140, 140, 150,000. 2008 auction alone reportedly brought him more than $170 million. In fact, Damien Hurst is one of the richest artists on Earth, with a net worth said to be close to a quarter of a billion dollars. Still, he can remember leaner times. I remember when I opened my first bank account, the bank manager said, what do you do? I said, oh, I'm an art student. Oh, it's up to all the face. Now I get a Christmas card from my bank manager. I'm sure you do. I'm a guy. Hurst grew up in Leeds, where he says he failed at pretty much everything except drawing, so he became an artist. And this 1991 piece really put him on the map, basically a 14-foot shark swimming in Firmaldehyde. What was it about the shark, about actually getting a shark that was important to you? You could have just painted a shark? My biggest fear was I've been making an artwork that you could walk up, look out, think, now, and walk away from them. And I just thought I didn't want to art. You could choose against. I thought I wanted to art that just got you, whether you liked it or not. That was the biggest fear was having an appetite. Yeah, to be ignored. Yeah, I didn't want to make artwork that you could ignore. Turns out he was impossible to ignore. In Damien Hurst's hands and atomical models became giant sculptures. Medicine cabinets became shrines for multicolored pills. His work often showed a preoccupation with death, like this piece, a platinum skull, set with more than 8,000 diamonds that sold for around $100 million. You know, realize it's the first thing I made that couldn't have in my own home, without security or people wanting to think, wow, you know, people could probably kill each other for this. It's like, you know, you've created quite a monster. He also created a reputation for partying as hard as he worked. When I first started drinking, I, I never used to get hangover and I measured the last one I had, which was 11 years ago, and it was like 78 days, I was still feeling bad. A seven or eight to hangover? Yeah, because you're just not able to deal with it anymore. But that was then. These days, beauty seems to be his drug of choice. These brilliant mosaic patterns are stunning and even more so when you see what all those colors really are. So these are all actual butterflies? They're all actual butterflies, yeah. And did you change the color? No. Nothing's been changed. They're just as they found. In case you're wondering, he doesn't catch them all himself. The butterflies come from old collections he buys up. Orange. And close by, there's a group of artists who execute his vision, spending their days in his Gloucester studio, hunched over works in progress, using bolts to keep the wings from fluttering off before gluing each one, oh, so carefully, into place. Of course, not every Damien Hurst is nearly as meticulous as this. So that's green. Summer downright messy, like his spin paintings, where he throws paint onto a spinning canvas to create a very colorful and very expensive splatter. My business manager said to me, that's an amazing painting you make in Damien, an old business manager. And I said, but you think everything I make is amazing. And he said, yeah, but it is. And it's like it's tempting to want to believe that, but you know it's not true. So it's like not everything, you know, everybody makes crap paintings at some point. Even you. Yeah, everyone, especially me. And throw the cup on it after. Really? And what I hear is that anyone can make great art, even those of us with no talent at all. And then toss the cup? Yeah. His color choices were brilliant. Mine, not so much. This is so fun. So if anyone can do it, is it art? If it looks good. And to me, it did look good. But Damien was never one to play it safe. Uh-oh. Because I love the painting. And I've been clashed on some paint thinner. Oh, no. Yeah. And instantly regretted it. So does that happen to you where you go just a teeny bit too far and then go, oh, I ruined it. I just did it. So maybe it wasn't his favorite, but then again, everything he touches is worth something. We're good? No, save everything. Actually, no, wait, touch me. Touch me, sell it. And now, after three decades creating one outlandish masterpiece after another, the artist is no longer a young man. But Damien Hurst has somehow found a kind of beauty in that too. Moody, moody guy. I've definitely got less time in front of me than behind me. I think I can say this way. How are you feeling about that you who has confronted death so many times with your work? I kind of feel as you get older, hopefully, you get a bit wiser. Maybe I feel a little bit wiser, maybe.