After selling NFTs Damien Hirst burns his own art worth almost £10 million

After selling a sequence of non-fungible tokens (NFT´s) in the past, Damien Hirst has started burning many of his own physical works of art.

Another artistic action

Hirst was asked what it felt like to burn his artworks, and he replied that it felt good, which was better than he thought. The coin is Hirst´s first collection of NFTs, made up of 10.000 NFTs, which translates to 10.000 original works of art he launched last year.

The Newport Street Gallery in London reported that buyers were given the option to opt for the digital or physical work. Of all the buyers, 5.149 chose to get digital works, while 4.851 bought works without a frame.

As consumers were informed earlier this week, the first 1.000 untraded NFT artworks would be burned on Tuesday, this was shared by Hirst with his instagram followers earlier in the week.

The Turner Prize winner and his assistants livestreamed the act as they placed the pieces on the gallery´s mantelpieces with tweezers as they were stacked in front of the viewers.

For the burning, a camera was used to record the unique code of each work of art that Hirst burned before being burned, this with the idea of ​​keeping a record of each piece burned before being burned.

Why did he decide to burn his tokens?

There has been a lot of criticism of Hirst for his choice to shred his own prized artworks during a time when there was a cost-of-living crisis.

Last July, put up for sale a collection of 10.000 NFTs, priced at $2.000 each; each one corresponded to a real-life work on paper. Hirst gave collectors a year to enjoy their NFTs, but in the end they had to make the decision to keep digital or physical art

In the end, the results were 4.851 holders of NTFs, and 4.851 physical works to be consumed by the flames

The 10.000 physical works were displayed in the gallery, stacked in transparent slides towers, for those who chose the physical works to collect them. Once collected, these works are replaced by translucent black and white slides. The others are taken out one by one and go up to the oven room.

Some critics have accused him of being a master of publicity, as he previously gained fame during the Young British Artists movement in the 1990s. In addition, he is considered one of the most controversial artists in Britain today.