Before his latest art collection "The Currency", Damien Hirst gave his stakeholders two choices, to buy the original work or a digital NFT, Non-fungible token, that represents it.
The latter choice would mean burning the original.
Altogether, works of art with, according to Hirst, a total value of 10 million pounds have now been burned, writes the BBC.
Digital displacement
Hirst explains the burning as a kind of metaphor for the inevitable movement of art into the digital world.
- Many people think I burn millions of dollars in art, but I don't.
I complete the development of the physical artworks into NFTs by burning the physical versions,” Hirst told the BBC.
Kulturnyheter's art critic Dennis Dahlqvist does not agree with the digital movement of art and is critical of what he calls Hirst's "PR trick".
- I don't think at all that art will become digital in the future.
I rather think that people will want art that you can hold on to. When everything becomes more digital, art can become like an anchor, he says.
"Tired of his publicity stunt"
It's not the first time Damien Hirst has sparked debate.
Since the early 1990s, he has been known as one of Britain's more controversial artists.
In his exhibition "For the love of God" (2007), he covered a human skull with diamonds that would be the world's most expensive work.
In "The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living" (1991) he stored, among other things, a tiger shark in formaldehyde.
- I'm tired of his PR tricks.
It's always this twisted sensationalism that we might associate with English tabloids but now we've seen it all.
If there is anything that is interesting, it is his ability to manipulate the media, says Dahlqvist and adds:
- And the art itself is completely bland, small spots of color that could be anything.
Hear Kulturnyheter's art critic Dennis Dahlqvist tell more about Damien Hirst's art burning in the clip above.