The Iconic Spin Paintings of Damien Hirst Get the NFT Treatment
British artist Damien Hirst has teamed up with art services and technology business HENI to present his iconic Spin paintings in a more technology-driven format dubbed The beautiful paintings. Now fans of Hirst’s decades-old work can get their own version of Spin paintings in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFT) using HENI’s technology.
The beautiful paintings NFTs are minted on the Ethereum blockchain. They can also be physically produced in four different sizes in either square or round shape. HENI says Hirst will personally sign the physical artworks.
The artworks can be produced by avid collectors via an app dashboard available on HENI’s official website.
More about The beautiful paintings
How to use the dashboard and create a work of art?
Collectors can choose the size, style, colors, shape and medium to generate their artwork, which will be randomly generated using the inputs. HENI says that “each piece of art in this series will be unique.”
There are 25 different styles that generators can choose from. Spin styles are given names such as “Heavens”, “Gyrations”, “Explosions”, “Tourbillons”, “Supernovas” and “Typhoons” among others. There is also a black and white style called “Star Clusters”. Collectors can further customize their output using the optional blur feature.
Titles on each output, which are “playfully long and descriptive”, are created through machine learning, starting with the word “beautiful” and ending with “painting”. But if the name isn’t what the collector wants, they can regenerate a new one for the artwork.
The beautiful paintings was launched on March 31st and will be available until April 10th. The physical versions of the artwork are Giclée prints on artist canvas in polycotton mounted on birch plywood stretchers. Depending on the size, the physical artworks will cost between USD 1,500 to USD 6,000, excluding taxes. All NFT versions, on the other hand, are priced at USD 2,000 excluding taxes.
What is Spin paintings?
The Spin artwork was produced on a spinning canvas, with Damien Hirst pouring in pigments and the colors melding together.
Hirst started his Spin paintings in 1992. The first artwork was titled Beautiful sunbeam on a rainy day, painting.
One of his famous collaborations was with music legend David Bowie, whom Hirst created Beautiful, Hello, Space-Boy painting in 1995. That painting was auctioned for around $1 million in 2016.
(Main and Featured Images: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd.)
This story first appeared in Prestige Online Hong Kong
