Few artists have been better rewarded for their patience than Vera Moln\u00e1r<\/a>. As she approaches a century on planet earth, the type of algorithmic art she has been conjuring via increasingly competent machines since the late 1960s is very much in vogue.<\/p>\n If her inclusion inside the main exhibition of last year\u2019s Venice was a belated grand introduction to the mainstream art world, her selection as the first artist in Sotheby\u2019s fully on-chain Gen Art Program<\/a> achieves something similar with the crypto art crowd. It\u2019s the auction house\u2019s<\/a> latest blockchain venture, one that places long-term confidence in a single slice of the NFT universe: generative art.<\/p>\n Moln\u00e1r is a fitting lead-off artist. Her computer art experiments began in 1968 at the Sorbonne where she created artworks using a punch card and early programming language Fortran. In what Moln\u00e1r terms \u201cmachine imaginaire,\u201d or computer imagination, the Paris-based artist has long celebrated the spasmodic outputs of machines with particular attention to color and composition.<\/p>\n A test mint from Vera Moln\u00e1r\u2019s \u201cThemes and Variations.\u201d Courtesy Sotheby\u2019s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Moln\u00e1r\u2019s offering at Sotheby\u2019s, at a sale titled \u201cThemes and Variations,\u201d which she likens to the piano mutations of Bach, is a sly wink at the digital world her work is being embraced by. Together with algorithmic artist Martin Grasser, she has devised a system that will generate 500 unique pieces centered on experimenting with the typography and formulation of the letters N, F, and T. The series, which will be executed live on July 28, is sequential with the background of the first work informing the foreground of the second. For color, the artist has expanded the palette of her favorite pastel crayons.<\/p>\n \u201cVera Moln\u00e1r is one of the undisputed legends of generative art, whose decades of experimentation with the form has paved the way for what we know of today as algorithm-based digital art,\u201d Michael Bouhanna, Sotheby\u2019s Head of Digital Art said in a statement.<\/p>\n A test mint from Vera Moln\u00e1r\u2019s \u201cThemes and Variations.\u201d Courtesy Sotheby\u2019s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gen Art Program is a collaboration with generative art-focused platform Art Blocks<\/a>, and Sotheby\u2019s is implementing its partner\u2019s preferred mode of sale: Dutch auction, whereby bidding starts at a ceiling\u201420 ETH or $37,000 in the Moln\u00e1r sale\u2014and descends incrementally. It\u2019s the first time, the auction house claims, that it has used the format in its 300-year history.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter decades of exploring how systems and computers can generate artistic outputs, I see this collaboration with Sotheby\u2019s and Art Blocks as a culmination of those efforts,\u201d Moln\u00e1r said. \u201c[It provides] a new way to generate never-before-seen, unique abstract forms that are defined by the controlled randomness of machine programming.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n More Trending Stories:\u00a0<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A German Museum Came Up With an Insanely Low-Tech Solution to Protect Its Rembrandt Canvas From a Leaky Ceiling<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A U.S. Judge Permanently Banned Digital Artist Mason Rothschild From Selling His \u2018MetaBirkin\u2019 NFTs, Handing a Win to Herm\u00e8s<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A 17th-Century Double Portrait of Black and White Women, Said to Be of \u2018Outstanding Significance\u2019 Will Remain in the U.K.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Art Industry News: South Korean Student Thought a Museum Wanted Him to Eat the $120,000 Duct-Taped Banana + Other Stories<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This Famed Dollhouse Is Hung With Tiny Original Artworks, Including a Miniature Duchamp. Here Are Three Things to Know About the One-of-a-Kind Treasure<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Elisabetta Sirani Painted in Public to Prove Her Work Was Her Own. Here\u2019s How She Became a 17th-Century Star\u2014and Why She\u2019s Being Remembered Now<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Vera](\"https:\/\/news.artnet.com\/app\/news-upload\/2023\/06\/Vera-Molnar-Themes-and-Variations-randomly-generated-test-mint-2023_5-1024x1024.png\")
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