A palette of multicolored dots by artist Damien Hirst burns at the Newport Street Gallery in London on Tuesday as part of his ‘Coin’ project. For that, he released a set of 10,000 NFTs, each corresponding to a physical artwork. Buyers can either keep the non-fungible code, in which case the board will be burned, or keep the board, in which case they will lose the NFT.
Isabelle Infantes/AFP via Getty Images
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Isabelle Infantes/AFP via Getty Images
A palette of multicolored dots by artist Damien Hirst burns at the Newport Street Gallery in London on Tuesday as part of his ‘Coin’ project. For that, he released a set of 10,000 NFTs, each corresponding to a physical artwork. Buyers can either keep the non-fungible code, in which case the board will be burned, or keep the board, in which case they will lose the NFT.
Isabelle Infantes/AFP via Getty Images
british artist Damien Hirst Among the many art world giants those who have set a fire to their work, after they burned 1,000 of his artworks Tuesday. He streamed the event on Instagram and is set to burn thousands more artworks.
It is part of his “Currency” project. It consists of an array of 10,000 NFTs. Each irreplaceable token corresponds to a physical plaque that features its signature multicolored dots, made from enamel on handcrafted paper. The pieces were initially available for $2,000, which is a reasonable price compared to what Hearst’s business was for It is known to go to him.
“A lot of people think I burn millions of dollars worth of artwork but I’m not, I complete converting these physical artworks to nfts by burning physical copies,” Hurst wrote in an Instagram comment. “The value of digital or physical art that is difficult to determine in the best of times will not be lost, but will be transferred to Nft once burned.”
A year after buying a piece of “The Currency,” collectors had a choice. They can either take the board, which means they will lose the NFT, or hold on to the NFT, which means the board will be burned.
“The Currency pitted Hearst’s entry into the new world of digital art against his old-school practice, and asked the art market to decide which was more valuable,” Carolyn Goldstein of Artnet News wrote.
Buyers were roughly evenly divided in their decisions, with 5149 choosing to trade their NFT against the original board and 4,851 choosing the NFT. The pieces are on display at London’s Newport Street Gallery and will be cremated during Frieze London Art Gallery, which runs October 12-16.
that NFT is a digital ID that confirm the authenticity and ownership of a physical or digital object. It serves as a kind of receipt, and its uniqueness makes it valuable.
in contemporary art marketDirector Nathaniel Kahn told NPR in 2018 that art is being traded as an asset and seen as a financial tool. The energy required to create it also made it notorious for the environment.
Many of the comments on Hearst’s Instagram post about the cremation were critical. “Either way, it’s all about the money,” one user wrote. Another wrote: “An interesting strategy to maximize the carbon footprint of this group.”
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