Richard Embrey 118


THE DIGITAL ART MARKET I S NO MORE...


The digital art market has taken a huge hit recently. Since Christie’s sold its first digital artwork in 2021 for $69.3 million, it is now worth a fraction of that.


For example, at it’s peak the well known Tak ashi


Murak ami ’s Flower s NFTs were selling for $200,000+, but the current floor price is around $500. From a sudden boom in this market 5 years ago, it is now all but bust. Last month Christie’s quietly closed down its specialist digital ar t division and Sotheby’s has scaled down their interest as well.


This is a good thing, as this is market was always quite mad. From when the first ever Tweet was sold for $2.9m back in 2021. To peak ing at several NFT ar t sales of people paying tens of millions for what is little more than the rights to the original of a digital image, something that anyone can just copy for themselves. I have never seen the attraction in just owning the r ights to something that can so easily be copied. But this is not new to the art market, as people have been paying for ar t ‘concepts’ for years. From a glass of water on a glass shelf called The Oak Tree, to piles of hay on a gallery f loor, that need to be dismantled to move and would of course eventually rot,


to more recently someone paid


$6.2m for the “ Comedian” installation of a banana taped to a wall. Which af ter buying the buyer promptly said he would eat the banana in the coming days as part of the exper ience!


LIVE24-SEVEN.COM


So what have these people actually bought? The piece was originally released as an edition of three;


two were


purchased for $120,000 and the third for $150,000. All the buyer receives is the Copyright, to reproduce this installation themselves as an ‘or iginal, ’ as they paid the fee for a piece of paper f rom the ar tist saying that they can do so.


I believe the law allows anyone to reproduce any


ar twork , as long as it is not presented as the original. So we can all tape bananas to our walls at home and enjoy this ar t and save $2.9m! Just don’t claim that it’s an original.


This is why I fai l to see the value of these type of ar t purchases and the attraction can be nothing more than a status symbol. The ar tist Damien Hirst tried to buy one of the three in 2020, but was unable.


ENTERTAINMENT AR T G U ID E


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