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Damien Hirst Just Burned 1,000 of His Paintings and Will Soon Burn Thousands More (npr.org) 113

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
British artist Damien Hirst is among the many art-world giants who have set fire to their work, having burned 1,000 of his artworks Tuesday. From a report: He streamed the event on Instagram and is set to burn thousands more works of art. It's part of his project "The Currency." It consists of a collection of 10,000 NFTs. Each non-fungible token corresponds to a physical painting featuring his signature multicolored dots, made from enamel paint on handmade paper. The pieces were initially available for $2,000, which is affordable compared with what Hirst's work has been known to go for.

"A lot of people think I'm burning millions of dollars of art but I'm not, I'm completing the transformation of these physical artworks into nfts by burning the physical versions," Hirst wrote in an Instagram caption. "the value of art digital or physical which is hard to define at the best of times will not be lost it will be transferred to the nft as soon as they are burnt." A year after buying a piece from "The Currency," collectors had to make a choice. They could either take the painting, meaning they would lose the NFT, or hold onto the NFT, meaning the painting would be burned.
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Damien Hirst Just Burned 1,000 of His Paintings and Will Soon Burn Thousands More More

Damien Hirst Just Burned 1,000 of His Paintings and Will Soon Burn Thousands More

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  • Something of value lost? (Score:3)

    by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @12:07PM (#62960123)

    So does the NFT now control rights to the ashes, or is that a new NFT?

    • Re:Something of value lost? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by narcc ( 412956 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @01:17PM (#62960391) Journal

      That's the think about NFTs. You don't actually get the rights to anything associated with it unless that is explicitly made part of the sale. Otherwise, all you bought was the NFT ... which is like paying to put your name on a ledger.

      If it sounds confusing, that's just because it's hard to imagine that anyone would buy what is essentially a receipt. This is why NFTs are so often associated with an image. It lets the marks pretend that they're actually buying something. It's all part of the scam.

      Remember the color NFT scam? [creativebloq.com]

      Want to own a colour? Cadbury, Tiffany & Co, and Mattel all do, and now so can you. [...] The new NFT marketplace, called the Color Museum, is selling 10,000 sRGB (standard red, green, blue) hues and offering each ‘minter’ ownership of the colour.

      I shouldn't need to say this, but you don't "own a color" because you bought an NFT. The Color Museum can't make any legitimate claim over the "colors" in question. All they own are the NFTs they made which are associated with various colors. Understand that the color museum has no authority to grant ownership of a color or whatever rights you image come along with color ownership. All they can actually sell is an NFT, which is completely meaningless. Anyone is free to make and sell a similar NFT of any color at any time.

      Once you realize this simple fact, this grifter's claim that his works have "completed their transformation into NFTs" or whatever starts to look an awful lot like fraud.

      • the con artists that used to sell you "your own star!", which was just a piece of paper with coordinates and the attempt to instill awe.

        At least an actual piece of paper can be framed without transferring it to a proprietary "digital art NFT" store like LG and Samsung and other shit lords are trying to cash in on.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfm3 ( 830843 )

        The Color Museum can't make any legitimate claim over the "colors" in question. All they own are the NFTs they made which are associated with various colors. Understand that the color museum has no authority to grant ownership of a color or whatever rights you image come along with color ownership. All they can actually sell is an NFT, which is completely meaningless.

        Yes, that's why I paid to adopt a star and have it named after me instead.

        Oh, wait...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I don't want to defend NFTs, but it's not really any different to physical art.

        Say you buy a painting. You own the original painting, but typically not the rights to reproduce the image. The artist may exploit those rights separately by selling prints, or if it's out of copyright anyone can make copies.

        The real difference with NFTs is that the scarcity is artificial. While someone has to physically create a painting or an upside down urinal or whatever, NFTs can be produced by a machine in any quantity requ

  • Why? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @12:09PM (#62960129) Homepage Journal
    Why would anyone take a NFT over the physical object?

    I simply don't understand...

    You can't hang a NFT on the wall..so, how do you enjoy the art?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Money laundering.

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by znrt ( 2424692 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @12:16PM (#62960177)

      Why would anyone take a NFT over the physical object?

      I simply don't understand...

      You can't hang a NFT on the wall..so, how do you enjoy the art?

      i think the paintings themselves are utter crap and this guy has been somehow just making a fortune out of rich gullible people with them so ... nothing to object! kudos for him.

      but then i particularly like how he frames the whole thing, with the forced choice and the ceremonial of actually burning the original. it goes beyond the fad into the core question about what we actually choose reality to be. it's the most ..., scratch that, the first interesting citation of nft i have ever seen.

      it's just not environmentally friendly. ok, burn him!!!

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        it goes beyond the fad into the core question about what we actually choose reality to be

        I don't know about that. It's like holding the deed to a house that burned down. Er, well, not even that as the NFT didn't grant you any ownership or other rights over the real property.

        I'm going to guess this is exactly what he wants the marks to think anyway. Maybe sales were drying up as people got wise?

    • Why would anyone take a NFT over the physical object?

      Because the physical one is burnt, so now you "have to".

      You can't hang a NFT on the wall..so, how do you enjoy the art?

      You enjoy it by listening to the guys who sold it to you, tell you that you're now a self-made successful investor. It's not about the art.

      • But with traditional art, you can invite your upper class friends over and seat them so they have to look at it on your wall while you explain how special it's supposed to be. If you try to show them your NFT and keep them looking at it all evening, they probably aren't coming back and you aren't getting that recommendation to the exclusive country club.

        • The guys buying NFTs aren't going to the country club. Maybe the guys selling them, but more likely they're just hanging the NFTs on their Facebook wall, not in the foyer.

    • Why would anyone take a NFT over the physical object?

      I simply don't understand...

      You can't hang a NFT on the wall..so, how do you enjoy the art?

      When are we going to replace the Mona Lisa with a postcard picture of the Mona Lisa?

    • Because then it becomes custom currency, not art.

  • How many chose to keep the painting? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @12:10PM (#62960139)

    I wonder how many chose to keep the painting? The survivors from this might be worth quite a bit, if there are few enough of them.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • "art" in the loosest sense of the word (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nicolaiplum ( 169077 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @12:14PM (#62960167)

    Apart from the fact that Damien Hirst's art is not very good art and doesn't have enduring value, these "artworks" are as complex and time-consuming to create as a doodle on a paper napkin, so he's not burning anything very valuable.

    Even his multi-million pound pickled shark went mouldy after a couple of years (the shark was then skinned, so it became a taxidermied shark, and then replaced with a different preserved shark), so his bits of paper being destroyed after a short while is quite consistent with the general durability of his art.

    Resale values of a lot of Hirst art pieces are not as high as the initial prices, so they don't have enduring value.

    This is all in addition to anyone involved in NFTs automatically being a planet-incinerating Ponzi-scheme-supporting cockwomble.

    • The multi-million pound shark was actually made for Damien by a subcontractor, so instead of merely BUYING art, you could just pay a subcontractor to knock something together and BE AN ARTIST. Orders of magnitude cheaper, too.

    • Re:"art" in the loosest sense of the word (Score:4, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @03:27PM (#62960855)

      these "artworks" are as complex and time-consuming to create as a doodle on a paper napkin, so he's not burning anything very valuable.

      The value of art has precisely zero to do with its complexity or time taken to create it. Art is valued by how much rich people masturbate over it. Nothing more.

      "Number 17A" could be painted in an afternoon by a child and it none the less sold for over $200million at auction.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

        Well, someone laundered $200M using "art" as the vehicle of legitimacy...

        http://mileswmathis.com/launde... [mileswmathis.com]

        • Indeed. But the point of the matter is that art value isn't related to its complexity or time. Simply being used for money laundering is actually one thing which reenforces the point I was making.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

            Oh, agreed there, so long as "value" means "money".

            Cultural or intrinsic values have apparently become thoroughly disconnected from money-values.

    • The act of burning is the artwork and its a brilliant idea. People who bought the NFT or the painting bought nothing, they are just a part of the artwork and its hilarious.

      This is all in addition to anyone involved in NFTs automatically being a planet-incinerating Ponzi-scheme-supporting cockwomble.

      Well, NFTs are now energy efficient, you can't use this argument against them anymore.We can find them stupid but its an useless fight now. Yes you can create ponzis with NFTs(or anything else by the way). They are just the digital version of pokemon cards. Fighting NFTs all day is a waste of time imo.

    • Re:"art" in the loosest sense of the word (Score:5, Interesting)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @05:49PM (#62961245) Homepage

      Even his multi-million pound pickled shark went mouldy after a couple of years (the shark was then skinned, so it became a taxidermied shark, and then replaced with a different preserved shark), so his bits of paper being destroyed after a short while is quite consistent with the general durability of his art.

      When the shark toured for exhibitions around the world, do you think they actually transported the same shark, formaldehyde and all? That's not how that works. They go to the site and "rebuild" the shark there.

      I'm reminded of a time I was at the Tate Modern and some museum-goers were all disappointed that the exhibition of Duchamps "Fountain" was labeled as a replica and was "not even the original." (The original was a urinal bought at a hardware store. So was the replica.)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by KMnO4 ( 684253 )
      A master huckster like Hirst pulling something like this is further evidence we've truly hit 'peak mathematical parlor trick'...which is how I refer to the the whole crypto/NFT shebang. See also: any other recent NFT stories, btc dropping below 19k which "could never happen" according to crypto "experts" of 6 months ago.

  • Burning NFTs (Score:3)

    by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @12:24PM (#62960205)
    At least if you could burn NFTs someone could heat a meal or their home and get some use out of them other than grift.

  • The amount of stupid in the art world keeps increasing

  • Modern art is worthless. No wonder so much of it gets turned into NFTs.

  • He's destroying that which makes it actually scarce. He's putting it on the blockchain, which means that no one, even the owner, will have an authentic original. They'll just be able to say that they paid for it. And, nothing he's creating is custom made. The only positive thing you can say about him is that his art was shite in the first place, and he's doing a great job swindling morons.

    • Re:What a fucking idiot (Score:4, Interesting)

      by nasch ( 598556 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @01:00PM (#62960351)

      He's putting it on the blockchain

      Depends what you are referring to with "it". He's not putting art on the blockchain, because it doesn't support anything so big. What goes on the blockchain is (generally, though not necessarily) a URL pointing to an image. There's nothing scarce about that to begin with; the only scarcity is in the record stating who paid for it. So the buyer is literally paying for nothing more than a record of the fact that they paid.

  • I've lost all faith in humanity... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @12:48PM (#62960303) Homepage Journal

    I honestly thought the internet would bring a revolution of learning and education. Instead the opposite has happened. Then entire world is getting dumber.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nasch ( 598556 )

      I honestly thought the internet would bring a revolution of learning and education. Instead the opposite has happened.

      There's a lot more of everything on the internet. More learning, more culture, and more idiocy.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by iisan7 ( 914423 )
      Nothing changed about people. The internet allows them to sort better into what interests them. You can bring a horse to water, but many will go after Coca Cola.

    • Re:I've lost all faith in humanity... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @01:47PM (#62960519) Journal

      I honestly thought the internet would bring a revolution of learning and education. Instead the opposite has happened. Then entire world is getting dumber.

      No that's not true. They were dumber before, they just never had a platform where they could broadcast their stupidity. If you ever got in a political argument in the 80s, you remember.

      Before NFTs, before the internet, the scam was to sell people the Brooklyn bridge.

      • No that's not true. They were dumber before, they just never had a platform where they could broadcast their stupidity.

        It's more than that. Young and inexperienced people are being sucked into fake information scams, conspiracy theories and such at an alarming rate.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by JustNiz ( 692889 )

        >>the scam was to sell people the Brooklyn bridge. .. I think you mean "the scam was to sell Americans the London bridge".

    • Then entire world is getting dumber.

      Don't judge the world based on it's dumbest members. The prevalence of information and education does not automatically mean everyone will take to it.

  • So it seems the modern-art market is swilling in so much shit that the conmen artists have to look to new marks among the NFT morons.

  • And a bathtub of hand tools?

    I remember the "performance artists" well. Their spiritual descendants are now all doing TikTok challenges, deciding what gender they'll be this week. That's what the bathtub of hand tools are for.

    • Bathtub is my gender, you insensitive clod!

      I was hand tool last week, get with the times!

    • This may have been a bit offensive. I was thinking of Mike Doonesbury's wife J.J. Doonesbury from G.B Trudeau's comics about a very erratic performance artist in the 1980's who did just such art.

  • Good. Please burn them all. Also, burn all stories published about this, because I don't give a shit.

  • It's a hard Winter for all of us, and artists are notoriously short on cash so they have to burn whatever trash they find to keep warm.

  • when a so-called artist... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tiqui ( 1024021 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @01:24PM (#62960421)

    tells you that his "works" are worth nothing, maybe you should believe him instead of throwing money at him.

    I have a rule about art: If I can do it, it's not art, or at least not "art" that deserves to be in a gallery or to be bought by any collector. The rule applies all the more if a child or an animal or a computer can do it.

    There was a day when an artist presented a painting or a sculpture to the world and people were in awe of the great skill displayed, then came a generation of people with far less talent who decided that something was art if the general public was confused by it, and the audience was expected to look at a new work and try to imagine some deep meaning, then we got "performance art" which degraded to the point people were paying to watch an "artist" urinate on the audience, or smear excrement on canvas, etc.

    The emperors of art have no clothes.

    A fool and his money are soon parted.

  • NFT does not correspond to anything physical (Score:3)

    by Anon42Answer ( 6662006 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @01:33PM (#62960461)

    "Each non-fungible token corresponds to a physical painting"
    Correction: Each non-fungible token direct to a URL location where a digital copy of a painting may be located, or may not now or in the future.
    There is no "corresponds" to actual physical painting

  • Never heard of the guy before. A quick search showed that I wasn't missing much. I guess he got some attention out of this.

  • And nothing of value was lost.
  • Looking at the stack of 'artwork', they all seem the same, just a random dotgenerator. So he didn't even break a sweat or creativity in creating those thousands of paintings. If it were all a tual paintings l
  • Let's let history make its assessment.
  • Once his computer is hacked or the works are displayed (perhaps to auction them off), those fungible NFTs are worthless.

  • The KLF should Burn their performance art of burning a million quid.

  • He gave them a choice between the physical and NFT versions when he sold it, and he even gave them a year to decide which they wanted.

    And he's keeping his promise.

    I have no interest in owning any existing NFTs, but at least this guy is playing it straight.

  • Damien Hirst just engages in garbage shock art for rich idiots. I bet his "paintings" were little more than squiggles that existed just so he could announce how he destroyed them.
  • Firstly won't this release C02? Is this guy some kind of Eco-terrorist? Secondly with price of power in the UK would it not have been better to wait for winter and use to heat to warm people who can no longer afford to warm their homes?

  • featuring his signature multicolored dots

    Burn the art and delete the files. Nothing is lost.

  • Damien Hurst has no talent, no artistic skill, in his entire body. He's about as close to being an artist as I am to being a NASCAR driver.

  • A lot of you don't seem to understand what conceptual art like Damien Hirst's is about. It's not like buying s painting that matches your couch. It's about ideas.

    Consider that Yves Klein sold "invisible paintings," for which he only accepted gold. He'd give you a receipt, but unless you burned it, you could not consider yourself in possession of the "authentic immaterial value" of the art. This was in 1959.

    You don't have to like it or understand it, but to say "that's not art" (as trolls have been doing sin

  • That 'art' can be removed from the canvas - or even just painted over top. Is his 'art' that bad?
  • Uhm.... choose painting, lose NFT rights, take picture of your painting, profit!
  • before the term "artist"

  • Hirst gets press for burning his work? I've pretty consistently flushed a third every day for decades. All I have to show for this is a restraining order from BBC News.

  • I had time for some of the YBAs, Emin in particular, but Hirst was always dull. Jumping on the NFT bandwagon after all the sensible people have jumped off shows that he's even more out of touch now than he was back then.
  • In this way it will become more eternal than any physical piece of art. But, if one figured out a way to precisely translate a physical object into a waveform via Schrodinger's equation, then encode that into a time crystal, one may fully preserve the physical art effectively forever. Both of these scenarios are highly unlikely but are potentially possible.

  • It sounds to me like he is just scamming people by hosting NFT's on a domain he wont want to pay for the hosting of after his checks clear; at that point they will go the way of the CNN Vault.

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