{"id":14081,"date":"2024-02-23T22:15:10","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T22:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nft.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/23\/christies-is-still-betting-on-nfts-preps-sale-with-pioneering-artist-robert-alice-artnet-news\/"},"modified":"2024-02-23T22:15:10","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T22:15:10","slug":"christies-is-still-betting-on-nfts-preps-sale-with-pioneering-artist-robert-alice-artnet-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nft.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/23\/christies-is-still-betting-on-nfts-preps-sale-with-pioneering-artist-robert-alice-artnet-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Christie’s Is Still Betting on NFTs, Preps Sale With Pioneering Artist Robert Alice | Artnet News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If it has been a while since the letters \u201cNFT\u201d cropped up anywhere on your art world radar, you are not alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

It has been nearly three years since digital art, in the form of non-fungible tokens, stormed the international art market<\/a>, surged to peak levels, and then crashed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Christie\u2019s is now revisiting the category with a major initiative<\/a> that it describes in press materials as a \u201cfull circle\u201d moment. The house is holding a sale of digital art on March 12, with 400 works by pioneer Robert Alice\u2014the first artist to have an NFT sold by the house, predating even the auction of Beeple\u2019s Everydays\u2014The First 5,000 Days<\/em>, which made a gobsmacking $69.3 million in 2021. <\/span><\/p>\n

Alice\u2019s works, titled SOURCE [On NFTs]<\/em>, <\/span>are visually stunning (and somewhat evocative of art star Mark Bradford), rendered in Day-Glo colors via a methodology that aims to distill the pre-history of NFTs into large color fields.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, luxury art publisher Taschen<\/a> has just released a massive 600-page tome, On NFTs<\/em>, edited by Alice. The book explores digital art\u2019s evolution, and it is being touted as the first serious history of the medium. Taschen toasted its publication last night at its store in Paris, where the NFT Paris conference is underway.<\/span><\/p>\n

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On NFTs<\/i> by Robert Alice . Image courtesy Taschen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cRobert Alice is an artist who Christie\u2019s has had a long relationship with,\u201d said Sebastian Sanchez, manager of digital art at the auction house, noting that the Christie\u2019s sale of his NFT<\/a> in 2020 as part of a sculpture \u201ccompletely shattered the estimate at the time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The upcoming Alice sale, on March 12,<\/a> will be the house\u2019s first \u201con-chain generative art collection,\u201d Sanchez said. Hosted on a \u201c3.0\u201d platform built specifically for digital art, the auction will have features that may surprise traditional art buyers.<\/span><\/p>\n

For one, payment can only be made in crypto. Also, the event will proceed as a kind of Dutch auction, meaning that price of the works will begin high and then drop until all 400 have been sold. (If you want one: act fast.) While it\u2019s \u201cthe standard,\u201d in the digital art industry, Sanchez said, it marks the first time Christie\u2019s is handling a sale this way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alice offered some more background on what sounds like a mind-bending project. The 400 works will be \u201cauctioned and minted live on the block chain, uses an algorithm called NLP, or natural language processing, that is one of the backbones of machine-learning models and is adjacent to AI,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a semantic algorithm that is good for categorizing text. It allows machines to understand not just the meaning of words but their semantics.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Sample<\/p>\n

Sample Output, Robert Alice, SOURCE [ON NFTs], <\/i>2024 \u00a9 Robert Alice, All Rights Reserved (3).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The algorithm was trained on a wide range of subjects and texts\u2014from Walter Benjamin to Seth Siegelaub\u2019s Artist\u2019s Reserved Rights Transfer And Sale Agreement\u2014<\/em>to find the semantic key words or \u201csoul of the texts,\u201d Alice said. <\/span>These\u00a0source materials\u00a0are then \u201cfed in\u201d to an algorithm\u00a0which generates new text phrases that the artist uses to\u00a0create the sprawling, vibrant works.<\/p>\n

That creation process parallels dynamics in the NFT space, which draws from lots of different histories, Alice said, ticking off \u201clibertarianism, the history of money and how that has been engineered over time, the history of crypto anarchy.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Alice was speaking to Artnet News via Zoom from London, where he was putting the final touches on a new studio\u2014a far grander place than the one he had in his early days at an abandoned police station in South London, where his studio was a former evidence room, \u201cliterally the size of a desk,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

How has he handled the volatile ups and downs of the NFT space and crypto over the years? \u201cYou learn to live with it,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen the consensus on a subject is WTF?, that is usually the most interesting place to be. No one tells us that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Discussing Alice\u2019s multi-hyphenate roles as artist, writer, and curator, publisher Marlene Taschen told Artnet News in a phone interview, \u201cIt gave me a lot of confidence because he has an art-historical background, is an artist, and a curator. He has many facets.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Sample<\/p>\n

Sample Output, Robert Alice, SOURCE [ON NFTs], <\/i>2024 \u00a9 Robert Alice, All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In another first, Taschen is accepting cryptocurrency through its website for sales of <\/span>On NFTs<\/em>, which is available in a numbered \u201chard code\u201d edition, a \u201ccollector\u2019s edition,\u201d and 100 \u201carts editions,\u201d which features four limited-edition pieces\u2014a signed print and, naturally, an accompanying NFT\u2014by different artists, including Refik Anadol.<\/span><\/p>\n

Taschen described the two-and-a-half year effort of creating the book as a \u201ccontinuous, organic, and informative process.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of co-curated,\u201d Taschen said, explaining that Alice \u201capproached about 30 artists and asked for their recommendations. It\u2019s quite democratic, an inspiring group effort.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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