The year 2021 witnessed a great hype around NFTs. NFTs became the subject of great fascination in the art and tech world. To the point that one NFT at Christie’s was sold for $69 Million. Artists found a new gateway to let their emotions out. Many turned their existing art into NFTs. New Artists found the opportunity to showcase their work in a new decentralized way. The Verge’s Mitchell Clark says the hype around NFTs majorly involves fine art.
Damien Hirst, an evocative multimedia artist, put up his thousand dot paintings with corresponding NFTs for sale at $2,000, last summer. But now the artist had to make a choice: To keep the NFT, or trade it for the physical canvas copy. The unchosen option would have to be destroyed. HENI, the art-tech firm that ran the sales for Hirst, says the experiment “explores the boundaries of art and currency – when art changes and becomes currency, and when currency becomes art.”
Now, with 10,000 pieces sold, the audience have given their verdict. 5,149 buyers chose to keep their physical art while 4,851 were happy to keep their NFTs. This fall the real-life art pieces of NFTs will be burned one by one, report Guardian’s Hariet Sherwood. Hirst is well-known for his large scale pieces created from pickled dead animals.
Hirst is highly fascinated by the world of NFTs and is excited to see where the whole thing goes. Hirst also faced the dilemma of choosing between his physical artworks and NFTs. He tweeted his decision saying that he would keep all of his 1000 currency as NFTs. Hirst says otherwise it wouldn’t be a proper adventure for me. He chose to believe completely in the NFT world even on the cost of destroying all thousand of his physical art pieces.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/08/06/evocative-artist-damien-hirst-ready-to-burn-his-1000-paintings-for-nfts/