SALES OF THE CURRENCY BY DAMIEN HIRST

   

These two Damien Hirst ‘Currency’ works sold within a hour of each other. ‘5083. Yeah, come on for a ride’, left, sold for US$45,966. ‘6307. We shall bring our own children’, right, sold for US$26,285.

Hirst’s latest art project, called The Currency, comprises 10,000 A4 sized pieces of handmade paper covered in very similar but not identical coloured spots. The back of each is numbered and signed by the artist with an arty title. Like actual contemporary bank notes, each also has a watermark, a microdot and a hologram to make it hard to forge.

The interesting twist is that Hirst has made this into an interesting experiment in the highly irrational economics of collectibles and blockchain technology.

Each painting has a digital certificate of ownership — a so-called non-fungible token (NFT). In fact, the buyers of each work have paid US$2,000 for the electronic token only. If they want the physical artwork, they must choose by July 21 2022 to trade in their token. If they do so the token will be destroyed. If they decide to keep the token, the artwork will be destroyed. They cannot have both.

Adding to the fun is the secondary trade in the NFTs — highlighting just how much of the art market is driven by money rather than love. The sale of all 10,000 works is worth $US20 million. But over the past month, since the artworks went on sale, there have been more than 1,800 resales, for almost US$40 million. The highest price paid so far is US$120,000, for No. 6272, titled Yes.

The original sale of the artworks worked like an initial public offering of shares. Aspiring buyers could register and say how many they wanted (but not nominate which individual work). The offering was over-subscribed, as more than 30,000 people wanted more than 60,000 tokens (that is, three time the available number).

This demand has spilled over into a secondary electronic marketplace (managed by HENI, the company that handled the initial sales). The graph below shows these sales.

   

Almost 500 are currently listed for sale. Most of the recent sales were for about US$50,000, more than 20 times the original asking price. What makes one work worth more than another? That’s hard to say, though titles appear to play a big part. Yes, which exchanged hands for US$120,000, for example, is one of the few works with a one-word title.

I think the paintings are at least pretty. And there’s the option at least to swap the NFT into a physical form the owner can hang on their wall. There are enough people who would like to do that to give this artful currency some underlying fundamental value.

That can’t be said of cryptocurrencies.

To read the complete article, see:
Damien Hirst’s dotty ‘currency’ art makes as much sense as Bitcoin (https://theconversation.com/damien-hirsts-dotty-currency-art-makes-as-much-sense-as-bitcoin-166958)

To read earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
THE CURRENCY BY DAMIEN HIRST (https://www.coinbooks.org/v24/esylum_v24n32a30.html)
ARTISTS USING MONEY AS A METAPHOR (https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/esylum_v23n14a41.html)

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