Artist Estates, Museums and Platforms Make Money by Embedding Traditional Artists’ Work in NFTs – ARTnews.com

This past Valentine’s Day, as the booming NFT market suffered an unexpected downturn that turned out to be a harbinger of this summer’s “crypto winter,” Vienna’s Belvedere Museum released its first NFT drop — a collection of 10,000 unique swatches from Gustav Klimt’s The kissmade by dividing the seminal painting into a 100×100 grid.

The Belvedere’s general manager Stella Rollig set the moment in high gear.

“What does it mean to own a work of art in the digital age?” asked Rollig in the press release. “The rise of NFTs, which has occupied the art world since 2020, has given new momentum to this exciting question. The conversion of digital reproductions into virtual originals opens up new forms of participation that should be taken seriously from an economic point of view, but which can also be seen in a playful way.”

The NFTs, which were listed for around $2,000 a pop, are meant to generate revenue to “collect, research, preserve and disseminate [museum’s] taxes…”

So far, just over 2,400 NFTs have been sold, bringing in an income of around 4.4 million euros, according to Belvedere press agent Irene Jäger.

“Since this project is a new field for us and somewhat experimental, we didn’t know what to expect,” Jäger said ART news in an email. “We consider the result a great success – it is the most successful NFT project with historical artworks to date worldwide. However, our goal is still to sell all 10,000 pieces.”

Belvedere is far from the only institution exploring NFTs for traditional art to build support, protect and preserve work, and bring in a new generation of art valuers.

In January, Pablo Picasso’s granddaughter and great-grandson, Marina and Florian Picasso announced plans to auction 1,010 NFTs based on never-before-seen ceramic works by the famous Spanish artist. However, Marina and Florian were quickly forced to renounce any association with the Spanish painter after his estate, as represented by the Picasso administration (run by other Picasso descendants), declared the series a “forgery”.

In February, Julian Sander, the great-grandson of August Sander, announced plans to imprint the legendary German photographer’s entire archive of 10,700 photographs on the NFT platform OpenSea for free. Sander said he wanted to “secure the legacy of August Sander on the blockchain.” All NFTs in the collection were claimed after the project’s launch, and within a few weeks over 400 ETH were traded in secondary sales on OpenSea. As accolades from renowned photographers rolled in, the collection quickly disappeared from OpenSea after German non-profit cultural foundation SK Stiftung Kultur filed suit. It turns out that Kultur, not Sander’s great-grandson, owns the copyright to August Sander’s work through 2034.

Perhaps the most successful of these quasi-property-driven NFT collections is “Computer Joy”, a collection of 15 individual NFTs featuring the seminal 1980s work of Lee Mullican and minted in partnership with the Verisart platform last November.

Before Mullican began creating digital art in the 80s, he had become famous for abstractions made with a printer’s knife three decades earlier. These almost mythical abstractions were the first of two major art movements Mullican was a part of.

“It’s important to recognize that Lee was at the forefront of two shifts in the art world,” said Cole Root, the director of Mullican’s estate. “In the 1940s, inspired by Paul Klee, we find late surrealism. And in the 1980s he moved to digital art. It is especially how open he was to experimentation in art. It’s hard to find a medium he didn’t work with.”

Late in his career, Mullican translated these boldly colored abstracts from the canvas to an IBM 5170 computer. The resulting creations offered a model for many in Mullican’s generation for how a painter could make his art digital.

Root, along with art writer and researcher Marie Heilich, and gallerist Marc Selwyn, selected the works for “Computer Joy” from over 300 digital works by Mullican. A subsequent exhibition of the physical works alongside their digital counterparts was held at the Marc Selwyn Gallery in Beverly Hills.

The show helped bring together typical older, more conventional art appreciators with the next generation of digital connoisseurs, Root said ART news.

“The NFT people were really interested in the paintings, and the traditional people were really impressed with the digital work,” Root said. “It was really nice to bridge the gap. That’s what we’re trying to do with the project as a whole – keep one foot in each world.”

Although most NFT collections that digitize traditional artists have until now been led by artist estates or museums, the NFT platform Click seeks to change that. Launched in 2021 by Alexandra Fairweather, the director of sculptor John Chamberlain’s estate, Click aims to digitize iconic works of art and rare archives. Click has framed its work as helping to preserve rapidly decomposing materials. Fittingly, the platform’s opening, titled “(Dis)integration,” featured monochrome images of an unnamed (though they say “world famous”) artist car in progressive states of disintegration.

The mystery of the artist behind “(Dis)integration,” according to Fairweather, is part of creating a new participatory experience that will engage novices and serious fans alike.

“What we’re really doing with this decline of (Dis)integration is getting people to understand why archives are important,” Fairweather said. “Going on this journey, trying to piece together all the clues to figure out who this is, what this story is about, what this project is about? If we don’t care about these archives, everything will be forgotten and lost.”

For Click, like many of the properties and institutions that make up collections, the decision to enter the NFTs “is about generating income streams for artists and properties in a modern way,” said Billy Folchetti, co-founder of Click. ART news. Click revenue goes to preserve Chamberlain’s estate, along with other collaborating artists. The company will also donate part of the proceeds to the non-profit organization Art21, which produces educational content about contemporary art, such as the recent feature William Kentridge: Anything is possible.

Click said it had stopped selling its NFTs earlier this year due to the crashed crypto market and will resume once the market stabilizes.

“These new media can inspire and educate people in a more accessible way,” Fairweather said ART news. “So many people are intimidated by the traditional art world and see it as a symbol of high culture. I hope that this will break down some of those barriers.”