Painter Lee Mullican’s Pioneering 1987 Digital Art released via Tezos NFTs

Lee Mullican’s physical paintings are in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and other prestigious institutions – but the late artist was also an early digital experimenter, and some of his decades old compositions have been tokenized and released as NFTs.

On Thursday, NFT art platform Feral File released “LeeMullican.PCX,” a collection of 12 digital pieces created by Mullican in 1987. Each piece was created with the PC Paintbrush app on an IBM 5170 in titular file format and stored on 5 ¼-inch floppy disks. Mullican, who passed away in 1998, was 67 years old at the time.

Each NFT is now stamped on Tezos blockchain, and contains the original PCX file plus a scan of the 35mm image that Mullican took of his computer screen showing each respective work.

An image of Lee Mullican creating early digital art. Image: Feral File/Estate of Lee Mullican

Feral File and the late artist’s estate minted 20 editions of each piece for public sale and first offered them as a package ($2,400) on Thursday, with the remaining pieces sold individually for $200 each the next day. The primary offering was completely sold out on Friday, although some parts are now available listed on the secondary market Objkt.

Mullican is best known for his abstract physical work, where small, rhythmic marks – applied with a palette knife – combine to form a larger composition. He is one of the artists behind the brief Dynaton movement of the 1940s and 1950s, and Los Angeles Times described him as being “most adept at creating forms of ambiguous temporality.”

He was introduced to digital art in 1986 via UCLA’s Advanced Design Research Center’s Program for Technology in the Arts, trading his palette knife for a mouse and stylus. The resulting works, some of which are included in “LeeMullican.PCX,” effectively translate his style into the digital realm with the kind of bold colors you’d expect from late-’80s graphics apps.

“I explored why I thought the computer was for me,” Mullican is quoted as saying by Feral File. “Even in my paintings, I always worked with pattern and line and color. I’ve had a built-in computer ever since I’ve been doing art.”

Mullican has been described as a digital art pioneer for exploring the possibilities of relatively simple software for early art, helping to lead the way for future generations of digital artists – and the rise of tokenized artwork. “LeeMullican.PCX” curator Anika Meier told Decrypt that the painter faced resistance at the time to entertain the concept himself.

“Lee Mullican experimented relentlessly,” Meier said. “Back then there was no market for digital art. He continued. He kept creating, no matter what people said. He was told he was wasting his time working on computers. He didn’t care.”

She added that the growing recognition of the work of Mullican and other digital art pioneers such as Herbert W. Franke serves as a signal to contemporary artists to keep creating and trying new things, regardless of market activity. It’s “a reminder to keep experimenting and keep going, even though there might not be immediate sales or recognition,” she said.

“LeeMullican.PCX” is the second NFT compilation based on Mullican’s early digital work. An earlier set, “Computer Joy,” was released as Ethereum NFTs through Verisart at the end of 2021. These pieces were released in combination with an exhibition of his physical work, while the latest release is a purely digital offering.

Mullican’s own digital work has now been tokenized and released via NFTs, but there is also a continuous line from his early experiments to the modern NFT art world. The tools today are dramatically more powerful and versatile, and there is also a thriving market. But it is still ultimately about artists finding new and distinctive ways of expressing themselves.

“The common ground is the excitement of entering new territory and pushing boundaries,” Meier said Decrypt. “What has changed is that there are not just a few pioneers, but many who are creating art with new technologies – and in doing so are changing art history, bringing digital art to the forefront – creating abstract digital paintings using code as a medium .”