{"id":727,"date":"2021-05-24T09:44:35","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T01:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/?p=727"},"modified":"2021-05-24T09:44:35","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T01:44:35","slug":"christies-auction-of-warhol-nfts-raises-questions-of-authenticity-among-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/christies-auction-of-warhol-nfts-raises-questions-of-authenticity-among-experts\/","title":{"rendered":"Christie\u2019s Auction of Warhol NFTs Raises Questions of Authenticity Among Experts"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a bid to attract crypto-wealthy buyers, Christie\u2019s is collaborating with the\u00a0Andy Warhol<\/a>\u00a0Foundation to stage an NFT sale comprising little-known digital art works\u00a0from the Pop master\u2019s archive. After the house announced the sale on Wednesday, some experts objected to it, claiming that the works being auctioned were essentially copies.<\/p>\n

With bids starting at $10,000, the online sale, titled \u201cAndy Warhol: Machine Made,\u201d features\u00a0five\u00a0NFTs<\/a>. They include signature Warhol motifs, such as his Campbell Soup Cans, flowers, and bananas, and two self-portraits. Scheduled to run through May 27, the one-week sale benefits the Warhol Foundation.<\/p>\n

In 1985, Warhol began a stint as a brand ambassador for the electronics manufacturer Commodore International, which gifted him an Amiga 1000 computer. It came equipped with the Propaint software program, which Warhol used to create his digital works. Michael Dayton Hermann, director of licensing, marketing, and sales for the Andy Warhol Foundation, said in a statement that the sale represents a \u201cwatershed moment in the history of digital art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the original works in the upcoming sale were featured in the 2017\u201319 exhibition \u201cWarhol and the Amiga\u201d at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. The files were discovered when artist Cory Arcangel teamed up with Carnegie Mellon University, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Andy Warhol Museum to recover them from the Amiga computer in a three-year long restoration project initiated in 2011 and finished in 2014.<\/p>\n

Those\u00a0<\/strong>involved with that project said that Christie\u2019s is misrepresenting the authenticity of the digital versions that are now being sold.<\/p>\n

Golan Levin, who heads Carnegie Mellon\u2019s Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry lab, which recovered the files from Warhol\u2019s computer, said that the NFTs being sold at Christie\u2019s are far from the originals. In an interview, Levin said that these NFTs derive from images reproduced at a higher resolution and reformatted using modern technology after the restoration, altering them in the process.<\/p>\n

In an interview with CNN, Christie\u2019s CEO Guillaume Cerutti said the sale represents for collectors, \u201cthe possibility to secure the uniqueness and authenticity of this work on the blockchain.\u201d Levin countered that statement, saying, \u201cChristie\u2019s was blithely saying you\u2019re getting five original artworks. It\u2019s not accurate. You\u2019re getting this kind of proxy or stand-in.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Levin claimed that his lab reproduced the high-resolution versions at the request of the Warhol Museum to use as press materials. Jon Ippolito, a professor of new media at the University of Maine, said this makes them closer to exhibition copies\u2014 duplicates of works that can be made for show purposes as stand-ins for an original artifact that may be too fragile to be showcased in a public setting or unavailable in a format conducive for long-term display. \u201cThis is not your grandfather\u2019s Warhol sale. It would have been nice to see Christie\u2019s engage with an expert in digital conservation and appraisal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The original artifacts recovered from Warhol\u2019s computer, held on a floppy disk owned by the Warhol Museum, were 320 pixels by 200 non-square pixels,<\/strong>\u00a0bespoke to the Amiga computer system on which they were produced. \u201cThis is pixel-accurate,\u201d said Levin of the original files, describing it them as \u201cunaltered, unscaled, un-stretched.\u201d The NFTs being sold by Christie\u2019s are 4,500 pixels by 6,000 pixels.<\/p>\n

For historians of digital media, something is lost in the upscaling process. Every pixel in the originals was \u201ctouched by the hand of Warhol,\u201d Levin said. When they are upscaled, those pixels become warped or distorted.<\/p>\n

Christie\u2019s forwarded\u00a0ARTnews<\/em>\u2018s request for comment to a Warhol Foundation spokesperson, who said that the intent behind the sale was \u201cto create NFTs that represent the most groundbreaking works from the artist\u2019s experimentation with the Amiga 1000. The artworks created in 1985 were digitally restored using 21st Century technology. Not unlike physical artworks that undergo careful conservation, the works Warhol created have been carefully preserved for posterity.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a joint statement, Hermann and Christie\u2019s postwar and contemporary art specialist Noah Davis said, \u201cThis is a moment and an opportunity that truly brings together two previously distinct collecting communities\u2014the traditional and the digital.\u201d Levin counters this, saying a sale of the original work would have been a defining moment in the digital art sphere.<\/p>\n

Davis helped usher in the house\u2019s record-shattering\u00a0$69 million Beeple NFT sale<\/a>\u00a0in March. Last week, Christie\u2019s auctioned off an NFT in a New York contemporary art evening sale for the first time. Titled\u00a0Cryptopunks<\/em>\u00a0(2020), the work produced by Larva Labs sold for $17 million.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source\uff1ahttps:\/\/www.artnews.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a bid to attract crypto-wealthy buyers, Christie\u2019s is collaborating with the\u00a0Andy Warhol\u00a0Foundation to stage an NFT sale comprising little-known digital art works\u00a0from the Pop master\u2019s archive. After the house announced the sale on Wednesday, some experts objected to it, claiming that the works being auctioned were essentially copies. With bids starting at $10,000, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,7,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artist","8":"category-auction","9":"category-events","10":"category-gallery","11":"category-latest-news"},"yoast_head":"\nChristie\u2019s Auction of Warhol NFTs Raises Questions of Authenticity Among Experts - Investable Art Auctioneer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In a bid to attract crypto-wealthy buyers, Christie\u2019s is collaborating with the\u00a0Andy Warhol\u00a0Foundation to stage an NFT sale comprising little-known digital art works\u00a0from the Pop master\u2019s archive.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/christies-auction-of-warhol-nfts-raises-questions-of-authenticity-among-experts\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christie\u2019s Auction of Warhol NFTs Raises Questions of Authenticity Among Experts - 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