The Lovely Work, Damien Hirst’s most up-to-date mission of A.I.-generated works, has proved a profitable enterprise for the British artist and his technological collaborator, HENI. In a nine-day sale that ended on April 10, Hirst bought 5,508 work (5,109 bodily artworks and 399 NFTs) and generated $20.9 million in income.
The mission is a digital remix of Hirst’s Spin Work from the Nineteen Nineties and outsourced appreciable creativity to collectors—albeit channeled by means of synthetic intelligence.
Utilizing HENI’s dashboard, collectors may decide the colours, type, dimension, and form of the work they needed to generate. The Lovely Work claimed to push the boundaries of artwork and wow folks, although, in actuality, the expertise of click-tinkering on HENI felt harking back to customizing a pair of sneakers on NikeID within the early 2010s.
Damien Hirst, The Lovely Work (2023). Photograph: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd.
Regardless, collectors went massive on The Lovely Work, fairly actually.
The biggest dimension on supply for Hirst’s squares and circles (extra-large, 100cm in diameter) had been probably the most profitable, producing $11.6 million. Circles additionally proved almost thrice extra widespread than squares, and bodily works extra widespread than digital ones—below 10 p.c of the works created had been NFTs.
This level on the enduring reputation of bodily works was considerably proved in Hirst’s earlier mission straddling the road of bodily and digital artwork: 2021’s The Forex. Collectors had been issued a bodily and digital model of the identical work after which pressured to burn one in every of them. The bulk opted to ditch their NFT for the bodily Hirst.
Nonetheless, the mission earned the artist upwards of $89 million, in accordance with his ebook on the gathering, The Forex: Chronicles.
Since gaining main artwork world consideration within the late Nineteen Eighties as a part of the Younger British Artists, Hirst’s work has come to be seen by collectors as a invaluable funding. Considerably perversely, Hirst has been one in every of his largest collectors, courting controversy by means of participating in uncommon market practices similar to shopping for again his personal work, an act some have labelled market manipulation.
Regardless of this critique, as confirmed by The Lovely Work, his work continues appeal to collectors—or traders, for those who’re cynically minded.
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