Christie's is entering the zeitgeist with its latest NFT release - a digital piece by the legendary Andy Warhol that was allegedly created back in the 80s.
When the iconic Pop artist was creating some of his most prolific works, he was also dabbling in the realm of digital between the walls of his famed Factory, no doubt. A report by Artnet was released in 2014 stating that digital files of images from Warhols computer were recovered - works made by computer software called ProPaint that never saw the public eye.
five of the images in question will now be offered as NFT's in an auction by Christie's New York - the iconic auction and private sales company - which will include digital renderings of some of Warhol's most notable works like his Campbell's Tomato Soup can, the flower, the banana, and two self portraits. This will be the first time a Warhol work has been offered as an NFT, and winning bidders of the collection entitled Andy Warhol: Machine Made will receive a 4,500 by 6,000-pixel TIF image as a 27-megabyte file.
The news comes with wary onlookers, however, with some even dubbing the works fakes. The original files off Warhols computer were originally recovered via 1.4-megabyte floppy disks, which according to Golan Levin, Director of the Studio for Creative Inquiry, shouldn't be auctioned off as Warhol originals when he believes them to be “altered, 2nd-generation near-copies.”
“It should be clear that a 6000x4500 image in Amiga's uncompressed .PIC format could not possibly fit on a 1.4MB floppy, nor in the Amiga 1000's 512kb RAM,” Levin noted via Twitter, “I'm not sure if your collectors care that they're bidding on a secondary by-product, but I would.”
Dear @ChristiesInc @gcerutti: As you advertise the authenticity of Warhol's "five original drawings" on the NFT blockchain, I'm concerned that your collectors might be confused about what they're bidding on—since you're not auctioning the originals, which were created at 320x200.
— Golan Levin (@golan) May 20, 2021
Cultural institutions, galleries and publishers constantly think that "high resolution" means "best-quality" or "original". This totally fails for low-resolution originals, such as the actual originals of the Warhol Amiga drawings, which were created at 320x200.
— Golan Levin (@golan) May 20, 2021
The auction is currently running from May 19 to May 27 and will benefit the late artist's Andy Warhol Foundation and its grant program which supports the creation, presentation and documentation of contemporary visual art. Bids on the Warhol NFTs have already reached $28,000. You can discover more via Christie's.
Image: @andywarhol_archive
