Damien Hirst To Burn Thousands of His Paintings To Show Art As 'Currency' (theguardian.com) 59
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Damien Hirst, the artist famous for pickling dead animals in the 1990s, is to burn thousands of his paintings next month in a project focusing on art as currency. Hirst, who was the UK's richest artist in 2020 with a net worth of more than 315 million British pounds, will destroy the artworks at his London gallery.
He created 10,000 unique dot paintings in 2016, each with its own title, that were later linked to corresponding NFTs and sold for $2,000 each. Buyers were given the option of keeping the NFTs or trading them in for the physical artwork. "The collector ... cannot keep both. This exchange is a one-way process, so choose carefully," buyers were told. Twenty-four hours before a deadline of 3pm Wednesday, 4,180 people had chosen to swap their NFT for a physical artwork, with 5,820 opting to keep their NFTs, according to Heni, a technology company focusing on the art market. The alternative version is to be destroyed, with the physical artworks -- oil on paper -- going up in flames on a daily basis from 9 September.
He created 10,000 unique dot paintings in 2016, each with its own title, that were later linked to corresponding NFTs and sold for $2,000 each. Buyers were given the option of keeping the NFTs or trading them in for the physical artwork. "The collector ... cannot keep both. This exchange is a one-way process, so choose carefully," buyers were told. Twenty-four hours before a deadline of 3pm Wednesday, 4,180 people had chosen to swap their NFT for a physical artwork, with 5,820 opting to keep their NFTs, according to Heni, a technology company focusing on the art market. The alternative version is to be destroyed, with the physical artworks -- oil on paper -- going up in flames on a daily basis from 9 September.
Proving what exactly? (Score:2)
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I think that Hitler was right -- when it comes to degenerate "art" like this. This is where most our tax $CURRENCY goes to from the part meant to help artists.
Putting a shop-bought toilet as a sculpture is a joke that was funny once. So (debatably) was covering the whole canvas in a single color. Or splashing paint randomly. The "artist"'s unmade bed wasn't funny even once IMO. All of this has been already done and there's no need for a repeat.
If your painting skills are below those of a literal chimp [zmescience.com]
Re:Proving what exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hitler was right
... A phrase which usually precedes a misguided statement. Take a look at some of the "degenerate" art the Nazis hated, and you'll probably agree with them on *some* pieces. But you'll also find you like *other* pieces.
This is completely normal for art. An artist isn't obligated to please everyone. An artist isn't obligated to make work that everyone understands. Think of your favorite music; for some people out there it's just noise, like dots on a piece of paper.
The Nazi attack on "degenerate art" is really an attack of the idea of pluralism. They really hated the fact that people enjoyed things they didn't like, or worse, didn't *understand*. They didn't want there to be art that wasn't *for* them, and what they wanted out of art was for it to serve their purposes.
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An artist isn't obligated to do anything at least in parts of the world that value human rights.
On the other hand, anybody accepting government subsidies tends to take on obligations. Fortunately no artist is required to take government money.
Government money for the arts should be fairly limited in scope. It should be primarily focused on making certain expensive-to-produce art forms commercially viable. This largely means subsidizing live perf
Nice Hitler Quote (Score:2)
TFS mentions this guy's net worth is over 300mil. Obviously he's creating something for which there is market demand so using this to complain about art subsidies is pretty silly. Likewise for your desire to censor his works, obviously people are enjoying his work if he's made so much money off of them so why should they be refused by any tax payer funded museum?
Honestly your quote from Hitler is as stupid and intolerant as one would expect a quote from Hitler to be. Just because you personally don't think
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Or evil.
Re: Nice Hitler Quote (Score:2)
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All the more reason to not argue with them!
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Obviously he's creating something for which there is market demand so using this to complain about art subsidies is pretty silly.
He's not creating art though, he's creating gambling opportunities. The punters are betting on whatever he churns out being worth more when they sell it than when they bought it. If my cousin tried the same thing it wouldn't work since no-one wants to bet on his stuff.
Re: Proving what exactly? (Score:2)
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Yeah but the debatable-novel artistic idea was to present a field of a single color as a painting (if we somehow let them ignore eg. heraldry). Painting it any other single color is at most a variant, rather than a new thing.
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It looks like one of those pictures where you're supposed to see a number when you're not color blind. We have art at the DMV now?
Re: Hand Painted (Score:2)
There is no way that Damien Hurst hand painted each of those dots. The lazy git paid someone else to cut up and pickle a shark, and that was the big artwork that make him famous.
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Again, bullshit.
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Proving that this guy knows how to market himself. In the marketing world, all publicity is good publicity.
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I don't think he's ever done art. He's done a lot of "art."
In looking him up:
-His first solo exhibitions were a bunch of solid color canvases with dead butterflies glued to them in a room with a table that has full ash trays on the corners.
-Between 1986 and up to the 10,000 dot paintings, he's done 1,000 more
-He pickles dead animals and calls it art.
-He spent 12 million pounds encrusting a human skull with flawless diamonds. It never sold.
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He is also highly skilled at representational drawing, for example https://gagosian.com/artists/d... [gagosian.com] . He sometimes incorporates conventional paintings in his conceptual installations.
He *can* produce art you wouldn't feel the need to scare quote, he just doesn't want to. I suspect he might scare some quote art you don't feel the need to scare quote.
There's a myth Picasso drew his cubist works because he couldn't draw. In fact by the time he was 12 he could do near photorealistic charcoal sketches. By
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Photorealism isn't a great indicator - especially since it's not very interesting when we can take photos. Picasso did not need that to make good work. It just seems obvious when people avoid creating real artwork because "art" is easier. I don't think his skill level or abilities are relevant when he doesn't show it.
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No it's not, which is the point. It just show mastered the technique as a child. Also "difficult", "quick" and "good" are all different things. Some of Picasso's most approachable and popular works are lithographs that probably only took a few minutes to draw. But if you think it's easy to do something that good, I invite you to try to make something as good as Don Quixote.
If you wanted to make a quick buck, and you had the ability, you'd dash off a bunch of drawings like Picasso's peace dove sketches, w
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I once had a Salvador Dalí etching, "Rembrandt". (Ended up giving it to my brother as a wedding gift.) I thought it was very good, and reasonably traditional. He did his weirder stuff from a base of good classical training. Similar sort of stuff as above.
https://dali.com/gallery/0533_... [dali.com]
Best wishes,
Bob
Proving that Damien Hirst is a hack... (Score:2)
This other Guardian article sums up his "oeuvre" quite accurately.
https://www.theguardian.com/ar... [theguardian.com]
In short, it is "art" for the penthouses of oligarchs who look out of their windows and ask who really cares about all those pieces of meat walking about down there.
His dots are the same kind of crap.
A cashgrab hackjob aimed at the NFT dullards.
He's got their cash, 10000 pieces or random dots at 2000$ a piece - now he will get more free promotion by burning some of those randomly generated dots.
He's not an art
Rick Masters (Score:1)
beating a real dead pickled horse (Score:2)
I'd pay $1 to watch that.
bonus points if he can get the ASPCA or even better - PETA up in arms about it.
Degenerate art (Score:2, Funny)
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In other news... Suckers... (Score:3)
> 4,180 people had chosen to swap their NFT for a physical artwork, with 5,820 opting to keep their NFTs
In other words, 4180 people were bright enough to realise the NFT is absolutely pointless, and 5820 people are complete suckers.
In a battle between a canvas with some paint on it, put there by an artist, versus an NFT, or even the jpeg the NFT points to, only the canvas has any actual value. Pretty soon those with NFTs will realise that they're holding a lemon and the valuable thing just went up in smoke.
I've got to hand it to the guy, this is some good art, in so much as it causes some thinking and discussion.
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4180 people were bright enough to realise the NFT is absolutely pointless, and 5820 people are complete suckers.
All 10,000 bought something worthless.
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And he made $20 million.
Unbelievable...
He created 10,000 paintings... (Score:3)
I have a couple questions, one leading...
How much effort really did one particular of 10,000 paintings take? Is it a loss if one gets burned?
Second question - What's to stop someone from keeping the painting and then creating a new NFT for it?
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Second question - What's to stop someone from keeping the painting and then creating a new NFT for it?
I would guess that the NFT issued by the "artist" is equivalent to a print, whereas the NFT issued by the owner of an original painting might be considered a forgery.
Next we'll have "art" experts whose specialty is the provenance and details of NFT's - "brush-strokes of the blockchain bits" as it were.
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I've worked with galleries. FWIW, big time conceptual artists like Hirst don't actually make the physical work any more - they come up with the concept, and then have a studio of craftsmen actually realise it. So, more like a playwright or composer than a painter.
Re: He created 10,000 paintings... (Score:2)
So what do you think the message is here?
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I am not with any galleries but I find this interesting. As much as I hate NFT's this is properly the one time that it made me honestly think of what the value of art or NFT's is. Each one of those painting is unique AND hand painted. He set the price at 2k each because he knew people would just go nuts like all the other NFT's scams. So now you almost a perfect setup for his piece called "The Currency"
Witch is more valuable? You can both trade either the NFT or the art. For all intents and purposes al
Not art (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, duh. NFT is involved, of course it's a scam.
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And also living proof that the whole NFT thing is just repeating history. With "artists" like these, it is mostly about the story behind the artist, the creation process, and whatever bullcrap the art critics can come up with; not so much the work of art itself. With NFTs, there is similar bullcrap around the "utility" of the NFT, and the "team" behind it (like it matters).
Good art can stand on its own merits,even if the story of the artist and the way he created it can enrich t
Good Riddance (Score:2)
He should also withdraw his riches in cash, and burn those.
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He's an artist, not insane. There is a certain overlap, but one doesn't require the other.
Whether that "artist" needs a three-letter qualifier is up to everyone's personal opinion...
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I want my MTV (Score:2)
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Exactly when I thought of when I read the headline: he's ripping off the KLF!
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I think that sums up Hirst's proposed bonfires-of-the-vanities.
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Second good laugh of the day - thanks!
This is Damien Hirst .... (Score:2)
Who sold a piece titled "For the Love of God" which he didn't come up with the idea for, design or make .... but he still apparently sold for £50 million ... until his old buddy who did come up with the idea complained and he now says he didn't sell it and it's in storage ...
Seems out of touch (Score:2)
I wonder what people will think of the carbon footprint of burning all these paintings. Can't be good.
Art as Currency (Score:2)
Artificial scarcity is artificial.
Hail Cryptonomics?
This will be great for the art world (Score:2)
This should bring the overall and average quality of art up, significantly.