Yahoo News I Artist Damien Hirst Burns Physical Copies of His NFTs Nov 28, 2022

Artist Damien Hirst Burns Physical Copies of His NFTs

Amber Nelson

Mon, November 28, 2022 at 11:00 PM·3 min read

British artist Damien Hirst recently wrapped up his first NFT collection

“The Currency,” and it was every bit as flashy and showman-like as his previous

works. Most notably, half of the artworks were burned at the show’s closing.

As non-fungible tokens — or unique digital assets — became an increasingly

popular commodity in the late 2010s, Hirst concocted an experiment to

see if physical art would still be valued over digital creations

One of 10,000 artworks featured in artist Damien Hirst's

He created 10,000 original pieces the size of a standard sheet of paper, each

with an NFT twin. Each piece was truly unique, as no painting had a single

repeated color in its dots. Every artwork was also signed by Hirst, numbered,

stamped, watermarked, given a microdot, and included a hologram of the

artist’s portrait on the back. Further utilizing modern-day technology for his

first NFT project, Hirst fed his favorite song lyrics into an AI-enabled computer

program to generate titles for all 10,000 pieces. Standout titles include “Totally

gonna sell you,” “Laugh in our faces,” and “None of this mattered.”

Official Damien Hirst seal printed on the backs of his 10,000 physical

Damien Hirst hologram printed on the backs of his 10,000 physical

AI-Generated title

The purchasing period began in July 2021. Buyers could opt for the physical or

the digital copy of the piece, and the one they didn’t choose would be

destroyed. They had a full year (until July 2022) to decide.

Damien Hirst holds up physical versions of the

Interest in Hirst’s collection boomed for the first month, with 2,036 purchases

and over $47 million in sales. However, over the course of the remaining 11

months, the collection’s gimmicky nature lost its shock value, causing floor

prices and trading volumes to steadily decline. By the spring of 2022, “crypto

winter” hit and sent the NFT market into a nosedive.

In the end, buyers were fairly evenly split. “The final numbers are: 5,149

physicals and 4,851 NFTs (meaning I will have to burn 4,851 corresponding

physical Tenders),” Hirst wrote on Twitter, beneath a photo of himself

despondently laying prostrate over boxes of his artwork.

Physical versions of Hirst's

That same day, Hirst also tweeted: “I have no idea what the future holds,

whether the NFTs or physicals are going to be more valuable or less. But that is

art! The fun, part of the journey, and maybe the point of the whole project.

Even after one year, I feel the journey is just beginning.”

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