England, they burn an authentic Banksy--and make 320,000 euros from it!

The "NFT frenzy," as the Anglo-Saxon newspapers call it, or the craze for Crypto Art works that is inflaming art market enthusiasts, has led a British collective to take a singular action: burning an authentic Banksy to make a profit. And the interesting thing is that the group, which calls itself Burnt Banksy, succeeded, with a net profit of about 240,000 euros: the burnt work, a 2006 print titled Morons, authenticated by Pest Control (the company that guarantees the authorship of Banksy’s works), had in fact been purchased by the company Injective Protocol for the sum of $95 thousand (about 80 thousand euros) and was then resold, after being burnt, in the form of NFT for the sum of $380 thousand (about 320 thousand euros).

But what does this all mean? With this action, the Burnt Banksy group wanted to turn the print into a work of Crypto Art, or digital art whose authenticity, as we explained in the article dedicated to Beeple’s record sale, is guaranteed by an NFT (Non-Fungible Token, “non-fungible token”), a cryptographic code, created in a blockchain (i.e., a kind of platform-database that serves as a public registry of NFTs), which bears certain information such as author and owner data, technical elements, ownership transitions, and so on. The difference between fungible tokens (fungible tokens are cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoins) and non-fungible tokens is that fungible tokens are all created in the same way and are therefore equivalent (10 bitcoins in the possession of one user are perfectly identical to the 10 bitcoins of another user and have their same value, just like real coins), while non-fungible tokens are unique assets, collectibles (the equivalent in the real world may be, for example, artwork or jewelry).

The purposes of the operation

In a sense, then, the Burnt Banksy collective has transferred the work to another medium. Properly proportioned, it is like when one transfers a work on canvas to a panel (although, as we shall see, there are those who have branded the operation as a mere gimmick). And the operation was captured in a video posted on YouTube last March 4 (to date it has exceeded 150 thousand views). The video shows a young man, wearing a mask, explaining the terms of the operation: "next to me is a Banksy work from 2006 entitled Morons, authenticated by Pest Control. Now, together with our partner Superfarm, a platform for buying and creating NFTs, we will turn the work into an NFT and sell it tomorrow on OpenSea [an NFT auction marketplace, ed.] Now I’m going to burn this Banksy: the reason for this is the fact that if we have both the NFT and the physical object, the value lies mainly in the physical piece, but by eliminating the physical work by making sure that only the NFT remains, we can ensure that through the mere existence of the NFT no one will be able to alter the work, and the NFT will be the only authentic piece that exists in the world. With this operation, the value of the physical object will be transferred to the NFT, which will be the only way to have ownership of the work."

The goal of the operation, the collective member explained, is “to inspire technology enthusiasts and inspire artists, as well as explore a new medium of artistic expression.” The choice of Banksy’s work is not accidental, partly because of the subject matter(Morons literally means “idiots” and depicts an auction where the words “I cant’ believe you morons actually buy this shit” stand out on a painting), and partly because, explained Mirza Uddin, spokesperson for Injective Protocol, “Banksy himself has in the past destroyed one of his artworks in an auction” (the reference is to what the British street artist did in 2018, when he “shredded” one of his Girl with balloon during an auction at Sotheby’s).

Just speculation?

While there are those who see the operation as a more democratic turn (the work is taken off the traditional market by taking it out of the hands of intermediaries, and facilitates its sale on NFT platforms, where exchanges take place more easily and directly), there are many skeptics, however, both among enthusiasts and experts: one user, below Burnt Banksy’s YouTube video, comments “welcome to a world where destroying and digitizing real-world information has the potential to create more value. Sounds dangerous.” The BBC gathered some comments, “Creative destruction of a work of art is not new,” comments gallery owner Gabrielle Du Plooy of Zebra One Gallery, “but it is still always irritating and shocking to see an object being destroyed. But in this case the intent seems more cynical: the company is probably making a comment about the collectors who buy these works, in the sense that they might literally be idiots with money to burn.” For Ossian Ward of Lisson Gallery, one of the world’s leading art galleries and author of the book Ways of Looking: How to Experience Contemporary Art, it is simply “a gimmick, playing on the fact that these things will make a lot of money. Then you can say everything is a work of art, but if you burn a Banksy to want to make money from it, on my scale of what is art this thing occupies a very low place.”

In the Guardian, Stuart Jeffries wonders if this is not a bubble destined to burst. And then, of course, it’ s not as if everything can be burned. A Banksy print is, after all, a multiple that probably didn’t even see the artist’s hand, or saw it just for the signature. Burning a one-of-a-kind piece created by the artist, on the other hand, would really be a morons act that instead of creating value would have the sole purpose of erasing a work, since, after all, between a Banksy screenprint and an oil on canvas there is a big difference in terms of perception, experience, uniqueness.

England, they burn an authentic Banksy--and make 320,000 euros from it!

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