Burning famous paintings transform into NFTs - new trend or grandstanding?
On 4 March 2021, in Brooklyn, New York, one of Banksy’s “Morons” was burning until the last charred fragment fell to the floor. In the twinkling of an eye, the painting, which had been transformed into NFT, was auctioned for 4 times its original value.
Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based street artist, political activist and film director. His “Girl with Balloon” is listed as the most popular artwork in the UK. In 2006, Banksy created 500 “Morons”, the painting depicting an auction where the work being auctioned is a painting with the single line: ‘I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit’.
However, the man who burned the painting was called ‘Burnt Banksy’, and before he burned it, he had a photographer take pictures of the artwork and upload them to Opensea (the world’s first and largest NFT marketplace) as NFT. This NFT version of the painting fetched 288.69 ETH at OpenSea, approximately $380,000.
They considered it “Banksy style” to burn the physical work and make an NFT version. Because in 2018, when Banksy’s “Girl with Balloon” was auctioned at Sotheby’s, Banksy played a prank and half of the painting was shredded by a paper shredder in the frame into the paper strips. An anonymous collector still bought this work for $1.4 million. “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge,” Banksy wrote in an Instagram post after the event. I guess that’s why they considered it’s a “Bansky style”.
By burning the physical work, the value of the physical work is transferred to the NFT, an equally ‘unprecedented’ social experiment which, apparently, was a great success. But there are also opposing voices at the same time. “We view this burning event as an expression of art itself,” said Mirza Uddin, a spokesman for Injective Protocol, told the BBC.
Other artists have begun to follow suit. For example, a Chinese modern and contemporary painter, whose paintings have fetched up to US$10,009,868 at auction, converted one of his Chinese national paintings to NFT after burning it with a lighter and sold it for over US$60,000 at Opensea in 2021.
To many artists in China, this is grandstanding, a parody of Burning Banksy's show. The fact that Banksy’s work can be transformed into NFT by burning has a strong correlation with his personal artistic style. Banksy’s work is more akin to reproducible prints, using pre-made stencils to spray paint the work in the street, and Banksy’s satirical spirit, rebelliousness, and value proposition are a natural fit with the spirit of the blockchain, so while there are many people who are opposed to burning Banksy’s work, making his work into NFTs can also be accepted. Whereas hyper-realist works and cubist works by other artists, for example, turned into NFT, are de-emphasized from the original meaning of the work and do not lend themselves to the use of NFT as an artistic medium.
After releasing his first NFT last year, renowned artist Takashi Murakami decided to go into production. He did not have a deep understanding of NFT art and cryptocurrencies before, but now, he does. He is about to relaunch his personal project ”MURAKAMI.FLOWERS”. It is a good example of his art combined with NFT.
I hope there won’t come a day when someone burns Picasso’s paintings and turns them into NFT art. But, who knows…
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
