The most distressing cultural news we've heard all week. A petrifying, dystopian curve ball has been thrown with the news that an upcoming auction for an NFT of a drawing by Jean-Michel Basquiat will provide the winner and new owner with the opportunity to destroy the original artwork. We are...not well.
The work in question is Basquiat’s Free Comb with Pagoda (1986) - a mixed media artwork on paper by the iconic and beloved artist, and will be sold on OpenSea marketplace. Bidding will start at one ethereum which is the equivalent to roughly $2,500, and the winner will have the opportunity to "deconstruct" the physical drawing in order to confine its safety to the digital realm and confirm the NFT as the only remaining form of the work at the potential expense of the original.
The auction has been sponsored by Daystrom, self proclaimed "digital-provocateurs" and anonymous founders of the tech company. “Value has become increasingly fungible, diluted and unstable in our evolving metaverse and there’s a tremendous spike in user demand for exclusivity. NFT assets provide this exclusivity and create an entirely new online value system that was previously unimaginable.” Daystrom explained in a statement.
If you're not familiar with the term, stands for Non Fungible Token, and certifies a digital asset to be unique and therefore not interchangeable. NFTs have been used to represent artworks, photos, videos, audio, and other types of digital files. The growing demand for the rights to these NFT's has grown significantly in the past months, and it has already resulted in the burning of a Banksy work in order to secure the work digitally, which is exactly as horrific as it sounds.
On behalf of Jean- Michel's legacy we're calling the police.
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Image: @Jean_michel_basquiat
