A painting with multicolored dots by artist Damien Hirst burned at Newport Street Gallery in London on Tuesday as part of his project “The Currency”. To that end, he released a collection of 10,000 NFTs, each corresponding to a physical work of art. Buyers can keep the non-fungible token, in which case the painting will be burned, or keep the painting, in which case they will lose their NFT.
Isabel Infantes / AFP via Getty Images
hide captions
switch captions
Isabel Infantes / AFP via Getty Images
A painting with multicolored dots by artist Damien Hirst burned at Newport Street Gallery in London on Tuesday as part of his project “The Currency”. To that end, he released a collection of 10,000 NFTs, each corresponding to a physical work of art. Buyers can keep the non-fungible token, in which case the painting will be burned, or keep the painting, in which case they will lose their NFT.
Isabel Infantes / AFP via Getty Images
British artist Damien Hirst among many art worlds giant who have make a fire for their work, burned 1,000 of his artwork on Tuesday. He’s already live-streamed the event on Instagram and is set to burn thousands more pieces of art.
It’s part of his “Currency” project. It includes a collection of 10,000 NFTs. Each non-fungible token corresponds to a physical canvas featuring his signature multicolored dots, made from enamel paint on craft paper. The original works sold for $2,000, which is affordable compared to Hirst’s work. know to go for.
“A lot of people think I’m burning millions of dollars on artwork but I’m not, I’m finishing converting these physical works of art into works of art by burning the physical version,” Hirst wrote in an Instagram caption. “the value of digital or physical art that is difficult to determine at the best of times will not be lost, it will be carried over to the nft as soon as they are burned.”
A year after buying a piece from “The Currency”, collectors have to make a choice. They can either take the picture, which means they will lose the NFT, or keep the NFT, meaning the picture will be burned.
Caroline Goldstein of Artnet News writes: “‘The Currency’ spurred Hirst into a new world of digital art against his old ways, asking the art market to decide which was more valuable.” .
Buyers were almost evenly split in their decisions, with 5,149 choosing their NFT trade for the original picture and 4,851 choosing NFT. The works are on display at London’s Newport Street Gallery and will be burned during the Frieze London art fair, which runs from 12 to 16 October.
One NFT is a digital identifier confirm the authenticity and ownership of a physical or digital object. It acts as a kind of receipt, and its uniqueness makes it valuable.
In contemporary art market, art is traded as an asset and viewed as a financial instrument, filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn told NPR in 2018. NFTs are a new asset class that can become a commodity. The energy required to make them also makes them notoriously bad for the environment.
Many of the comments on Hirst’s Instagram post about the fire were critical. One user wrote: “Anyway, it’s all about the money.” Another wrote: “Interesting strategy to reduce carbon footprint for this collection”.
