{"id":8089,"date":"2021-07-13T18:58:03","date_gmt":"2021-07-13T22:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/?p=8089"},"modified":"2021-07-29T09:32:34","modified_gmt":"2021-07-29T13:32:34","slug":"can-you-believe-in-me-can-you-believe-in-this-damien-hirst-blurs-the-boundary-between-art-and-money-with-groundbreaking-nft-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/2021\/07\/13\/can-you-believe-in-me-can-you-believe-in-this-damien-hirst-blurs-the-boundary-between-art-and-money-with-groundbreaking-nft-experiment","title":{"rendered":"British artist Damien Hirst uses NFTs to blur the boundaries between art and money"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI used to give a lot of art away to people,\u201d<\/strong> reflects Damien Hirst at one of his sprawling West London studios. \u201cAnd they\u2019d always sell it after a lot less time than I thought they would. You know, they wouldn\u2019t sell it for leukaemia treatment for their children or mother or something; they\u2019d sell it to buy handbags. And I\u2019d be like, \u2018Damn, I hate that!\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Hirst is not on a quest to make a few bucks from a collectible nonfungible token (NFT). He\u2019s not particularly interested in celebrating career highlights, or even attracting a younger, richer, snazzier audience.<\/span><\/p>\n

He wants to know where the line between art and money is drawn \u2014 and if it can be drawn at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I suppose this whole project is like a test of that sort of area, right? I came to terms with it \u2014 it\u2019s like, you know, when you walk downstairs in your house if you got a painting, and it\u2019s not long before the spots represent dollar signs. I\u2019ve been thinking about that for a long time.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Instead of allowing it to lurk in the background, his latest work brings the tension between money and art to the fore. \u201c<\/span>The Currency\u201d<\/span> is the name for his drop of 10,000 NFTs, each tied to a physical painting created in 2016. After the $2,000 purchase of a \u201cTender,\u201d as Hirst calls them, collectors will have to choose whether to keep the NFT, which will be a high-resolution photo of the painting, or turn the NFT in for the physical painting.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: HENI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\u201cThe Currency\u201d<\/span> blurs the line between fungibility and non-fungibility, between money and art, and the project\u2019s core choice will force each collector to make a value judgement between paintings in meatspace and NFTs. By nature, \u201cThe Currency\u201d raises a number of philosophical questions: F<\/span>or starters, what is the value of the art versus the dollar value of selling it on the secondary market? What is the value of displaying it on the wall versus on a monitor? What is the value of portability versus permanence? <\/span><\/p>\n

These complex, perhaps unanswerable, queries may be obscuring a more intimate one he\u2019s ultimately posing to his audience, however: W<\/em><\/span>hat am I worth to you?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

First lessons<\/b><\/h3>\n

It\u2019s like Isaac Newton getting bopped on the head with an apple: As Hirst was first learning about art, he was simultaneously learning about the art market.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hirst often cites an early art teacher as a foundational influence \u2014 a \u201creally great guy, a theatrical guy\u201d who recruited him as Bottom in a school production of <\/span>A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/span><\/i>; who fought valiantly to secure him a spot in the sixth form; and perhaps most importantly, who kept the classroom stocked with art auction catalogs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFrom very early on, I was looking at all the items on auction, which is a good way in, […] and I\u2019d look at the prices, and I remember you could do like 10 grand, 20 grand for a Picasso or something,\u201d Hirst tells Cointelegraph. \u201cIt wasn’t a lot of money, but to me, it was a lot of money at the time. Just seeing art and money in that catalog was good.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In much the same way a happy accident helped Newton apprehend a fundamental law of physics, Hirst grasped early on that the attainment of fame in his field meant accepting and adapting to the reality that fine art and money are inextricably linked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, his remunerative wizardry is widely renowned \u2014 even occasionally taking the spotlight from his work. He\u2019s a master and a trailblazer when it comes to what crypto aficionados might call \u201cpumpanomics\u201d \u2014 the slurry of marketing, conceptual or visionary heft, and simple supply\/demand mechanics inherent in scarcity that can make a project\u2019s value soar to stratospheric heights.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Highlights include the 2008 sale of \u201c<\/span>Always Beautiful Inside My Head Forever\u201d<\/span> \u2014 a complete exhibition of 223 works that, in an unprecedented move, bypassed galleries to sell directly at auction for a staggering $200 million \u2014 and \u201c<\/span>For the Love of God<\/span>,\u201d <\/span><\/i>a diamond-encrusted platinum cast of a skull that sold for $100 million to a consortium of owners that included himself. At multiple points in his career, he\u2019s held the record for the most expensive work of art sold by a living artist; he currently sits in second place \u2014 adjusted for inflation, anyway.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: HENI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\u201cI mean, I worked out a long time ago that, you know, if there are two people with a lot of money, and there\u2019s not a lot of something, it\u2019s going to sell for a lot,\u201d he observes. Where some artists accidentally ride Veblen curves to fortunes, Hirst constructs, aligns and launches himself from them like Evel Knievel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hirst and NFTs may be a perfect match for this experiment. NFTs, by simple virtue of existence, often set critics apoplectic \u2014 digital goods, they argue, don\u2019t have \u201creal\u201d value. Or, by contrast, there\u2019s an emerging faction of pearl-clutchers who say NFTs paradoxically have <\/span>too much<\/span><\/i> value \u2014 that they represent a perfect tool for the commodification and\/or securitization of art.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And here\u2019s Hirst, an artist who has faced similar criticism at both ends of the value spectrum, taking these liminal notions often floating at the fringes of contemporary fine art and concocting an experiment to force collectors and critics alike to choose.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople get upset if I say, \u2018My art is connected in a biological way to money.\u2019 I just love it that people hate it. It just inspires me to do it. I want to look at it and see what happens. Will it do this? Can you push it this far without it breaking? Or will it break? I\u2019ve done that in everything, in individual art and in this project.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The \u201cmaster of exponential growth\u201d<\/b><\/h3>\n

In part, \u201c<\/span>The Currency\u201d<\/span> can be viewed as a response to a hypocrisy Hirst has been battling throughout his career \u2014 that art has always been \u201cassociated with lots of money\u201d but \u201cpeople weren\u2019t really allowed to talk about it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s the Van Gogh thing where you\u2019re supposed to be a starving artist and you don\u2019t make any money, never sell a painting. And everybody wants that. It\u2019s a complicated thing. I mean, the thing about art is, it\u2019s magic. You know, the whole thing is magic. You\u2019re taking really cheap ingredients, and you put them together in a way that they become worth beyond their wildest ingredients. […] Alchemy. That\u2019s what art really is.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Viewers and collectors only selectively believing in the \u201calchemy\u201d of art have long frustrated him \u2014 no one \u201clooks at the \u2018Mona Lisa\u2019 and says, \u2018That\u2019s just 20 quid in canvas and paint\u2019\u201d \u2014 but by contrast, throughout his career, he\u2019s often been asked about the prices of his sculptures relative to the cost of materials used to create them. It\u2019s a false dichotomy that artists minting NFTs and dealing in digital scarcity are likely familiar with \u2014 and perhaps why Hirst was quick to embrace them as a medium.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really know why, but I didn\u2019t have that massive resistance that a lot of people I respect have got. I saw it as a really amazing thing. I saw it like the invention of paper. It\u2019s like, you\u2019re arguing about paper, like, \u2018I\u2019m not going to stop using papyrus!\u2019 You\u2019re already living in a world where you can have artworks, prints and editions, and it seems like now you can have artwork, prints, editions and NFTs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Part of the immediate comfort could be that Hirst intuitively understands digital ownership. He recounted a story about one of his sons purchasing $10,000 worth of digital goods in <\/span>Clash of Clans<\/span>, but even grown-up collectors are increasingly drawn to virtual expressions of ownership as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the world I was living in, where increasingly, I\u2019ve noticed all art collectors are coming up to me, going, \u2018I\u2019ve just bought this, I\u2019ve just bought this\u2019 on [their phones], and you\u2019re looking at Picassos and Jackson Pollocks, crazy stuff that they\u2019ve got that\u2019s worth huge amounts of money. And they\u2019re sitting in bars, going, \u2018I\u2019ve got this, I\u2019ve got this.\u2019\u201d <\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a result, he\u2019s now pondering whether digital or physical ownership is a more powerful psychological draw \u2014 and he\u2019s eager to force people to make the determination:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLooking at the NFTs and the actual artwork, I look at it and I think, \u2018I don\u2019t know, I\u2019m excited by both, I don\u2019t know which is most important.\u2019 But then when I think about it, when I go, \u2018What will people do?\u2019 it sort of tells me where I lie, which is that most people will keep the [physical] art.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

An ironic element to the experiment is that Hirst freely admits that he\u2019d be relieved if the project\u2019s technical and market elements flopped. He tells a story about a collector who approached him once, griping that he was unable to sell a painting; Hirst thought to himself: <\/span>Well, put it on the wall!<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

There is a universe where \u201c<\/span>The Currency<\/span> Tenders,\u201d instead of being fractionalized and digitized and widely traded and living forever on the blockchain, are simply framed and hung and enjoyed \u2014 as an artist, Hirst thinks that would be a comfortable place for the experiment to end. The risk for him is in \u201cletting go,\u201d in knowing that collectors may take, break, sell or even destroy his work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Letting go also means that the project becomes something that is \u201calive\u201d \u2014 trading, moving throughout the world in marketplaces, changing hands, reaching new audiences. This effort involves the brilliance of Joe Hage, who Hirst calls \u201cthe master of exponential growth.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: HENI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Hage, who was once described by ARTnews as a \u201csignificant but rarely discussed force behind the scenes,\u201d is Hirst\u2019s equivalent of a chief technology officer. Commanding a small army of data scientists, lawyers and smart contract developers, Hage \u2014 <\/span>one of the partners of Palm, the ConsenSys-backed NFT-centric sidechain<\/span><\/a> where \u201c<\/span>The Currency\u201d<\/span> will drop \u2014 tinkered with the specifications of the project to create what may turn out to be a generous drop strategy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

His team likely could have charged thousands more per \u201cTender\u201d (Meebits, a project from NFT maestros Larva Labs, recently brought in over $70 million compared to \u201c<\/span>The Currency\u2019s\u201d<\/span> $20-million sale), but for the thing to take flight, you need to offset some of that potential gain to collectors, who are then tested by thriving secondary markets. If prices do soar, it will tempt the greed of collectors, who will have to weigh potential profits \u2014 another key element in \u201c<\/span>The Currency\u2019s\u201d <\/span>broader experiment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cults, gods and creators<\/b><\/h3>\n

Forty years after a child aimlessly flipped through a stack of auctions catalogs, in an innocuous former car park in West London, there is a temple being built to Damien Hirst. Palatial vaulted ceilings capped with translucent golden windows bathe the top floor with almost cathedral lighting (\u201c\u2018An Almost Cathedral Light!\u2019 Hirst bellows at this reporter from across the park, \u201cI like that! I\u2019m going to use that!\u201d).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One day, it\u2019ll be an excellent museum, perhaps Hirst\u2019s equivalent of The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; for now, it\u2019s one of the best private galleries in the world. When Cointelegraph visited, dozens of his cherry blossom paintings decorated the walls; French gallerist Herv\u00e9 Chand\u00e8s reportedly took one look and offered Hirst an exhibition on the spot. Hage notes that \u201cless than 100 people in the world know this is here\u201d \u2014 many of them, no doubt, took in all that beauty and ended up eager buyers of Hirst\u2019s wares.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Religions need gods, cults need cult leaders, and often, cryptocurrencies need founders. The founders attend conferences \u2014 yearly ritual gatherings in the major capitals of the world \u2014 where they nourish the souls of their followers with announcements, announcements of announcements, roadmap updates, new white papers, and even, ever-so-rarely, genuine technical improvements that (even more rarely) might offer functional utility to crypto hodlers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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I am releasing \u201cThe Currency\u201d at 3pm tomorrow (14th July 2021) on https:\/\/t.co\/rO9nG5DgFa<\/a>. This is my global art work experiment. It comprises of 10,000 NFT\u2019s, each corresponding to a unique physical artwork made in 2016. Each artwork is called a \u201cTender\u201d. @PalmNft<\/a> @HENIGroup<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/ky3PbzmjhQ<\/a><\/p>\n

— Damien Hirst (@hirst_official) July 13, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n