NFTs
Damien Hirst backdated at least 1,000 paintings from his NFT project, investigation reveals
Damien Hirst has once again come under scrutiny for retroactive your works. A Guardian report published yesterday reveals that at least 1,000 of the oil-on-paper paintings created for a recent NFT project were not made in 2016, as the artist claimed, but were in fact mass-produced in 2018 and 2019 by dozens of hired painters. by Hirst’s company Science Ltd in two studios, in Gloucestershire and London. One source described it as a “Henry Ford production line.”
In total, 10,000 paintings were made for The Currency project, each marked with a microdot, an embossed stamp of authenticity and a penciled title, date and signature on the back. When the project was launched in 2021, Hirst and Heni, the publishing platform run by Hirst’s business manager who was authorized to sell the works, repeatedly stated that the paintings were “created by hand in 2016”.
He intended to “explore the frontiers of art and currency”, like Hirst told the art newspaper In March 2021, The Currency was conceived as an NFT project – each painting was linked to a corresponding digital token. Buyers were given the option to purchase one of 10,000 NFTs for $2,000 each and were then asked to choose between keeping it or exchanging it for physical work. The initial sale raised about $18 million.
For those who chose the NFT, numbering in the thousands, its corresponding work on paper was burned by Hirst at its Newport Street Gallery in October 2022
According to one collector who opted for the physical painting, there was no certificate of authenticity issued when he picked up the work from Heni’s headquarters in Soho. The day he chose to keep the painting, the NFT was removed from his metamask wallet and all email links, including the one on his receipt, disappeared.
Traditionally, dates assigned to works of art are widely understood to refer to the year they were completed, but lawyers for Science and Heni say it is “usual practice” for Hirst to date works according to the date they were conceived. . They did not dispute that at least 1,000 of the paintings the artist said were dated 2016 were actually painted several years later. According to Guardian sources, possibly “several thousand” paintings were made in 2018-19.
Hirst’s lawyers had a similar response in March, when the Guardian revealed that several formaldehyde sculptures were dated by their company to the 1990s despite being made in 2017. “Artists have every right to be (and often are) inconsistent in dating their works,” they told the Guardian in season.
As for the Currency, it remains to be seen whether the dating issue will affect the value of the paintings. To date, around 100 have been resold at auction – all dated 2016, according to Artnet’s price database. Prices ranged from £5,000 to £28,000.