Spot the idiot

In what at first glance looked like the inventor of affordable rolled gift wrap finally having enough, Damien Hirst last week began the process of burning those of the 10,000 individual A4 paintings their buyers decided to trade in for an NFT.

“Each of the 10,000 unique NFTs correspond to an original work on paper by Damien Hirst,” says the Heni NFT website. “The collector has to decide between the digital NFT or the physical artwork, but cannot keep both. This exchange is a one-way process, so choose carefully.”

Such is the fanaticism of the greater-spotted NFT evangelist, we wonder whether Hirst at any point considered asking them to offer up their own bodies as currency for their imagined treasures, casting himself as the fly-zapping UV light in his notorious 1990 installation, A thousand years, frying them as fast as they gorged on the blockchain’s figurative rotting head. Unlike the circa one million creatures he’s already butchered, at least it would have been their choice.

Maybe that would have provoked some thought. This is just a pyromaniac in Scribbler.