“In the beginning I had thought I would definitely choose all physical,” Hirst explains.
“Then I thought half-half and then I felt I had to keep all my 1,000 as NFTs and then all paper again and round and round I’ve gone, head in a spin.” In the end he went wholly digital, having decided that “I need to show my 100 percent support and confidence in the NFT world (even though it means I will have to destroy the corresponding 1000 physical artworks).” Perhaps this was a victory of Hirst’s neophilia, but then, those instincts have served him well before: few living artists have managed to draw such public fascination, enamored or hostile, for so many years straight - let alone such formidable sale prices, and not just for his stuffed shark.
“I’ve never really understood money,” Hirst says to Stephen Fry in the video above. (You can watch an extended version of their conversation here.) “All these things - art, money, commerce - they’re all ethereal,” ultimately based on nothing more than “belief and trust.” Returning to the techniques of his early “spot paintings” - those he made himself before farming the task out to steadier-handed assistants - and minting the results into unique digital objects for sale was perhaps an attempt to get his head around the even less intuitive concept of the NFT.
