Last week (11/10/2022), Damien Hirst, a British artist who is well-known for his colorful dots painting, burned 1,000 pieces of his artworks worth millions of US dollars. He burned the artworks after selling them as NFTs.
This is part of Hirst’s project entitled “The Currency” that made up of 10,000 NFTs. Each NFT work corresponds to an original physical painting of multicolored dots on handmade paper. The collectors should choose to keep the NFT or the physical artworks. If they decide on the NFT work, the artist will burn the physical version of the artwork.
“The Currency” art project aims to question the boundaries of art and currency. When does art changes and become a currency? And, When does currency become art? This project started in 2016 by creating physical artwork. Up to now, 4,851 buyers choose to collect the NFTs, while 5,149 others opt to keep the physical paintings. It means that the artist needs to buy over 3,800 artworks in exchange for the NFT versions.
The interesting thing is Hirst considers the artwork burning not as a destruction of millions of dollars of art, but it is a completing process that transforms physical artworks into NFTs. It shows that the artworks do not disappear, but transform into other media. In this case, the NFT versions make the artworks remain alive, despite the physical paintings having been destroyed.
Over a year ago, Banksy’s original work entitled “Morons” was burnt and destroyed and the NFT version has been sold for hundreds of thousands dollars. In the artwork inscribed a phrase: “I can’t believe you morons actually buy this.”
NFT artworks are being more popular because each token cannot be replicated and their value can reach tens of millions of US dollars. NFT or non-fungible token is a unique identifier of a digital object. NFT can confirm the authenticity and ownership of the digital object.
The burning of artworks to sell them as NFTs is still debatable whether it is an “art expression” or merely a “commercial object” to trade. Some believe that the burning is creative destruction that transforms the image to other media. Others say that this activity is purely motivated by money.
More people are interested in collecting NFT artworks because realizing the strong commercial value given by digital art. The NFTs also allow non-traditional collectors “to collect art anonymously in a non-judgmental environment”. Moreover, the digital version can diminish the physical limitations and degradation of the physical artworks.
Looking at some reasons for collecting NFT artworks, it is not surprising that artwork burning will be a trend. However, people should be aware that NFT arts could be a ‘bubble’ that someday will be ‘burst’ when the NFT boom is over. Capitalism practice in art also has a risk to degrade and limit creativity, since the artist and the viewer only focus on capital interests. Artists should rack their brains to keep their creativity and critical thinking alive within the capitalist environment.