The Currency, the new provocation by Damien Hirst (EN)

Damien Hirst is the enfant terrible of contemporary art. He always manages to surprise us, with the animals in formaldehyde, the skull covered in diamonds or with mandalas made with actual butterflies’ wings. He surprises us, for sure, but he also asks us some questions, for example on life and death, on what is moral or on the value of art. With his new initiative, The Currency, Hirst ticks again all these boxes.

The Currency (23rd September – 30th October at Newport Street Gallery in London) is an atypical exhibition. In the gallery rooms you will find rows of plexiglas racks, whose 10,000 total cases may or may not show Hirst’s dotted paintings (each one’s original price: $2,000).

Actually, The Currency is basically a performance. In the past months, the owners of the paintings  were given the option to choose between keeping the tangible artwork or change it with the matching NFT. NFT means Non-fungible Token: it is a record on a blockchain associated with a specific digital or physical asset. The physical artworks of the ones who have chosen the NFT (almost half of the owners) are displayed in the racks and will be burnt in one of the stoves which have been installed on this occasion at Newport Street Gallery.

The owners know when their artwork will be burnt and can attend personally, such as at a funeral, also with the crematorium. Hirst himself decided to exchange with NFT the whole number of artworks from this series he owns.

There is provocation, there is the topic of death, there is a moral challenge (is it ethic to burn a valuable artwork?), but, most of all, The Currency brings to our attention a big question mark: towards where the art market is going? I have to admit that I am very old school on this matter.

For me, collecting art means first of all a personal pleasure, it means being surrounded by inspiring artworks that improve the quality of our lives. Art is for sure an investment, as well, and the value of certain contemporary art (Hirst included) is growing strongly. But this passage to NFTs makes me think that the financial aspect is nowadays the main aspect. If so, why shouldn’t you buy stocks or bonds instead?

Someone could object: you can see the artwork through a computer screen, and with NFT you avoid any security or conservation issue. Well, but if you are an art collector, you can probably afford to insure your properties and to buy a good alarm system. But looking at an artwork in person and observing directly the brushstrokes cannot be substituted by a computer screen. Try it, looking at a Van Gogh painting in person and through the computer screen. Someone told me that in the future there will be new ways of fruition. Holograms, for example, can reproduce the physicality of materials and brushstrokes. Basically, it is like the ABBA virtual concert. Which is always sold out, although it is not cheap at all. But are we sure that we really like this kind of future?