British artist Damien Hirst burned hundreds of his paintings in his gallery in London on October 11, as part of his
Currency
project , during which he had offered buyers to keep or a physical work of art qu he created, or its version in the form of NFT.
Damien Hirst, one of the most highly rated artists in the world, willingly provocative, approaches the fireplaces in silver overalls.
He burns, in front of dozens of people present and live on Instagram, one by one his paintings, all similar with multicolored dots on A4 sheets.
“
Instinctively, I have the feeling that it is not good to burn works of art.
But when I think about it, I know I have to burn the works because it's part of the process I'm in
,” the artist solemnly told reporters, throwing works into the flames.
Read alsoDamien Hirst: “I am another man”
Damien Hirst unveiled his The Currency project
in
July
2021.
He put 10,000 works (those paintings with multicolored dots) up for sale, at $2,000 each.
Each of the 10,000 paintings corresponds to an NFT.
Acronym for “
Non-Fungible Token
”, the NFT is a “
non-fungible token
”, that is to say non-substitutable and therefore unique.
Concretely, it is a theoretically unfalsifiable digital certificate of authenticity, registered in a "
blockchain
" (a chain of blocks), just like cryptocurrencies.
NFTs have been breaking into the art world for several years.
Buyers had one year, until July 27, to choose: either they opted for the paint or the NFT.
More than half (5149) decided to keep painting, the others preferred NFT.
It was their works of art that were burned.
Nearly 5,000 will therefore go up in smoke.
A thousand paintings were to be burned on Tuesday.
The others will be on several dates in October.