Artist Damien Hirst will burn 4,851 paintings in the NFT project
Britain’s allegedly richest living artist, Damien Hirst, is set to burn thousands of his paintings as part of a year-long nonfungible token (NFT) project called ‘The Currency’.
Starting in September, visitors to Hirst’s private London museum will be able to see some of his 10,000 oil paintings depicting unique dots he made in 2016 and linked to NFTs in 2021.
Buyers of the $2,000 floor price NFTs were given the option to keep the token or exchange it for the physical painting. The original artwork will be burned for those who chose to keep the NFT version.
The deadline for the decision was July 27, with almost half of collectors, 4,851 wanting their paintings burned for digital NFTs, while 5,149 collectors chose to exchange their NFTs for physical versions.
The currency
The year is over boom that went fast! and we’ve all had to decide: NFT or physical? The final numbers are: 5,149 physical and 4,851 NFTs (which means I have to burn 4,851 equivalent physical tenders). pic.twitter.com/xCUJ0gviZ0
— Damien Hirst (@hirst_official) 27 July 2022
The art will be lit daily during the event which begins on September 9, culminating in its closing during the London Frieze Week event in mid-October, when the remaining paintings will go up in smoke. Commenting on the result on Wednesday, the 57-year-old artist said:
“I believe in art and art in all its forms, but in the end I thought f**k it! this zone is so damn exciting and the one I know the least about, and I love this NFT community, it puts me at ease.”
Hirst previously told The Art Newspaper that the project “touches on the idea of art as a currency and a store of wealth.”
The first sale and subsequent second-hand sales have been handled by the NFT marketplace Heni. According to Heni, sales increased in August and September 2021 when the project started. The Currency became the top collection in the OpenSea NFT rankings on August 15. However, volumes have fallen in recent months with the broader crypto market crash.
The maximum price for a piece was $176,779, with an average buyer spending $21,078. The last sale was on July 28 for $8,708 USDC, bringing the total sold for the collection to $89.3 million.
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Hirst commented that “I still don’t know what I’m doing and I have no idea what the future holds, whether NFTs or physical items are going to become more valuable or less,” adding that even after a year he felt ” The journey was just beginning.”
Damien Hirst was declared Britain’s richest artist in 2020, with a net worth of more than $380 million.
