Art As A Consequence 🍎🐍 #2
🌐 Covering on Hans Feurer's passing (1939-2024), Rybolovlev VS Sotheby's saga continues, Harold Cohen's show, NFT sales and corporate comeback, wait - what is HUO doing hanging out with Larva Labs?
Welcome to the second edition of the ART AS A CONSEQUENCE weekly newsletter. This week’s (traditional) art subjects I am covering focus on the passing of Hans Feurer, the part two of the biggest art scandal (of the decade for sure) and trial between Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev and Sotheby’s as well as a glimpse into the numbers ($$$).
Blending into digital art: why Harold Cohen’s upcoming exhibition at the Whitney Museum is important. Are NFTs making a corporate comeback? Also, big NFT sweeps - a few went on a shopping spree, and... wait is this Hans Ulrich Obrist hanging out with Larva Labs? Read more to find out!
LG,
Dimitria
📸 🕊️ HANS FEURER (1939-2024)
Prominent fashion photographer and artist Hans Feurer passed away this week. He was born in Switzerland and rose to prominence for his bold style in the 1960s. Feurer broke away from traditional static poses, creating a more vibrant and dynamic atmosphere in his photographs. His women, devilishly sexy, showed liberated curves that he has knowingly glorified over decades, mapping out their movements and their infinite grace.
🌊 Deep Dive Into The Most Fascinating Story
Sympathy for the Billionaire?
⚔️ Dmitry Rybolovlev VS Sotheby’s, Part II
🗞️ The legal saga continues between the Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev and his legal battle against Sotheby’s, aiding his former Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier in an alleged fraud. At this point, he seeks justice for the alleged wrongdoing, urging someone to admit culpability for having outmaneuvered him. Rybolovlev has been willing to pay a substantial amount of money to lawyers, investigators, and experts to prove his case and unfortunately for Sotheby’s, it lacks the financial resources to make Rybolovlev go away quietly, especially with the looming negative publicity.
”It's important for the art market to be more transparent, (...) the art market relies on auction houses like Sotheby’s to follow their own guidelines and create reliable valuations that can be trusted.”
—Dmitry Rybolovlev
🧮 Looking At The Numbers:
A $100 million introductory fee, paid over the course of 12 years, is the amount Bouvier paid Tania Rappo (the wife of Rybolovlev’s dentist) for putting him in touch with the Russian billionaire
$1 billion is the amount Rybolovlev claims he was overcharged by Bouvier
Over 12 years, Rybolovlev purchased 38 works for around $2 billion through Swiss dealer Yves Bouvier
Just last month, Rybolovlev resold Rothko’s No. 6 for almost $200 million through his new art advisor, Sandy Heller, who will be testifying next week in court in NYC.
👁️ 🔗 Catch up on the story, read my previous newsletter here
HAROLD COHEN: AARON
Upcoming Exhibition at the Whitney Museum, NYC
3 February - May, 2024
💡 Why This Exhibition is Important
A bit of personal introduction: Last spring I took an online course on Artificial Creativity from the Parson School of Design, one of the topics was Harold Cohen’s AARON - the first computer that created art. I had heard about Cohen from the 2022 retrospective exhibition at Gazelli Art House (see here) and was already very intrigued.
Harold Cohen is an incredibly important artist, both for his work in the traditional and computer-generated fields. Initially a painter who got to represented the U.K. at the Venice Biennale in 1966. In 1968 he accepted a professorship at the University of California, and moved to San Diego. During that time he thought “What are the minimum conditions upon which a set of marks function as an image?”
Cohen started with a simple machine that painted with random movement. Eventually, the project involved a mechanical computer system that created a large-scale painting. The programmer he ran into would go on and work on the first computers at Apple. In the early days, AARON created abstract drawings that gradually became more complex during the 70s. In the 80s and 90s, its images became more representational. However, Cohen began to notice the audience's attention is on the spectacle of the machine and less on the art itself.
“The last show at The Computer Museum in Boston (in 1995) the computer was generating work while the public was looking; it became obvious that they were not looking at the art. They were looking at the machine. One of the reasons I stopped doing that is that I was sending the wrong message. This is not interesting because it is robotic, this is interesting because it’s intelligent.”
— Harold Cohen
Starting from the 2000s, the images for AARON and Harold became more abstract once again until Harold's death in 2016.
What is mostly important, especially applying to today’s use of AI as a tool to create art, is questioning who does AARON's art belong to? To Cohen or the machine? Examining his method, Harold Cohen hardcoded special instructions, along with a randomization function, that allow the moves from AARON to be unpredictable even to the artist himself.
“What AARON entails is Harold Cohen as an artist, the software itself, and the collaboration between the two, that constant back-and-forth. (…)That, of course, does not exist anymore. (...) It’s something that Cohen himself conceded in 2011, acknowledging that ‘AARON will end when I end.’”
— Christiane Paul, curator of the show
👁️ 🔗 Find out more about the show
This Week’s 🛍️ In The NFT Space
🧹 Guess who’s back:🦩FLAMINGO DAO took the broom again and swept 17 Chromie Squiggles for 144 ETH / $355K (check the Tweet)
🧹Then, there was the 20 CryptoPunks sweep, that this guy @ApeHammer went on a 5-minute shopping spree 🛍️ averaged at 58 ETH / $140K (check the Tweet)
There were two big CryptoPunk sales this week, both on the 16th of January. Additionally, an offer for CryptoPunk 7804 (image below) at 1.7K ETH / $4.19M which was later withdrawn. Fun fact, Punk 7804 was bought on March 11th, 2021 for 4.2 ETH / $7.57M and got a respectful offer last November 2nd, 2023 for 7.8K ETH / $14.25M, seems like the hodler is in for some more - so this week’s offer is considered peanuts 🥜.
🐧 Pudgy Penguins is going through the roof
Floor touches 20 ETH on Jan. 18th (approx. $50K!)
The PFP NFT suffered following its release in 2021’s bull run after the Pudgy Penguins community discovered that the founding team had emptied the project’s funds - the usual rug pull.
The greatest comeback story: In April of 2022, Pudgy Penguins was sold to Luca Schnetzler for 750 ETH (ca $2.5M), Luca had bigger plans with strong rebranding efforts stating that NFTs need to “Shift Away From Ponzinomics”, and he as he promised:
May 19, 2023: Pudgy Penguins released a toy line, selling for $500,000 in 48 Hours
September 26, 2023: Pudgy Penguins IRL toy line debuted in 2,000 Walmart Stores
My question to you, Luca, is do wanna buy and rebrand moonbirds?
💼 NFTs Are Making A Corporate Comeback
(according to Forbes…)
Now that the market has crashed, a much less ambitious version of NFTs are finding a welcome home in the marketing departments of corporate America. “The card designs and cards you use for payment are a reflection of who you are,” says Christian Rau, head of Mastercard’s crypto and fintech operations in Europe when the partnership launched in October 2022. Digital art on a credit card “basically allows consumers to display a physical manifestation of an NFT they really care about.”
Because the goal of these collectibles is largely to keep users loyal to the issuing company, trading is discouraged, so you won't see many of these NFTs racking up volume on marketplaces like OpenSea and Blur.
“Just creating a profile picture collection or a loyalty program is low-hanging fruit,” says Ivan Dashkov, head of emerging technologies at Puma, who sees creativity as the key to blockchain success. “You really need to think of new, novel ways to use [blockchain] technology to reach, to interact with your customer.”
👁️ 🔗 Find the article here
Lastly, CryptoPunks launched a new online hub.
🕵🏻 iSpy… Hans Ulrich Obrist hanging out with Larva Labs co-founders?
The image is from nft now’s series 01_Punks As Told By CryptoPunks: Matt & John - which launched last year, but HUP was not included in the final episode. There is no information on the website… Is this supposed to be a secret? What’s coming?🍿
Visit artasaconsequence.net to discover more about my work in the art industry. You can contact me over email or find me on social media: Instagram | X | LinkedIn
