By purchasing Frank Stella’s new NFTs you get the rights to print his art – ARTnews.com

The Artist Rights Society, an organization that helps artists with copyright and licensing, is launching a new Web3 platform. Titled Arsnl, it will launch on September 9 with a series of NFTs by Frank Stella.

Stella is perhaps best known for her spare paintings from the 1950s and 60s, which are considered forerunners of the minimalist art movement. But the 86-year-old artist has previously used computers and 3D printing for large and complex sculptural works. According to Katarina Feder, Arnsl’s founder and ARS’ vice president, “NFTs were the natural next step” for Stella.

Stella is a longtime member of ARS, which Feder’s father, Theodore Feder, founded in 1987. Today, ARS represents the intellectual property rights of over 100,000 artists, assisting with copyright and licensing, while advocating for resale royalties for artists.

Stella has been dedicated to advocating for artists’ resale rights, campaigning for the American Royalties Too (ART) Act for resale taxes with Theodore Feder and even lecturing law students on the subject. So the benefit of NFTs, which automatically send royalty payments to artists upon resale, was immediately apparent to him.

“NFTs are exciting,” Stella said in another email ART news. “We can build in resale rights; it’s something we’ve been working on, rather fruitlessly, for decades. It will be wonderful if technology can give us what the government never could.”

When Feder sent out an e-mail asking if ARS artists would like to participate in Arsnl, Stella’s team got in touch right away. ARS and Stella began collaborating on a series titled “Geometries.” The 22 resulting NFTs are sleek, gray 3D objects that incorporate some of the more recent Stella designs. The Geometries XXI (2022) NFT is clearly modeled after Stella’s Barrel 12 Point Carbon Fiber Star (2016), a spherical sculpture with 12 points. Each NFT in the series will be sold for $1000 on the Arsnl site.

Offered in editions of 100, the NFTs come with an exciting perk: 3D printing instructions that only holders have the right to use to create their own Stella sculpture. In an email to ARTnews, Stella explained that 3D printing enables infinite reproducibility. Rather than trying to limit it, NFTs simply allow for legalization

“It’s an affordable and flexible way to own a Stella,” said Feder. “If you want to spend $100 to print a small one for your desk or $100,000 to print the big one for your lawn, you can.”

Stella decided to work with Arsnl because he believes the platform, given its ties with ARS, will be uniquely positioned to serve artists.

“ARS has always been a very strong advocate for its members, and Arsnl is the same,” Stella said. “As a reflection of that, they’re very good at making sure it’s the artist, not the platform, that comes out on top.”

Compared to other NFT platforms, Arsnl’s fee is quite high. In the case of the primary sale of an NFT sold on their platform, a one-off fee of 25 percent is charged. That’s a significantly higher fee than those on NFT marketplaces like OpenSea or SuperRare, where fees range from 2.5 percent to 15 percent.

Arsnl’s resale royalty is set at 10 percent, which is in line with what most marketplaces offer. However, Arsnl’s fee covers “technical and legal expertise to help navigate the complex processes of NFT mining, promotion and licensing of artists’ intellectual property on the blockchain and digital space, as well as guidance to museums and companies,” according to an Arsnl press release .

“Over the past year, we’ve seen a few marketplaces start to offer some help in this department,” Feder said. “But for us, we have 35 years of licensing experience, genuine experience in helping artists. I think it’s a unique position.”