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

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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