The art of Andy Warhol has entered the blockchain with a selection of images including a pink Marilyn, Forbes reports.
“Marilyn Monroe gazes over the eclectic decor of New York’s trendy Zero Bond private club as former fashion icon Baby Jane Holzer, 82, muses about her former friend Andy Warhol—and blockchain art. ‘He would have loved it,’ says New York Magazine’s 1967 ‘It’ Girl. ‘In some way, that’s what he was doing with the multiples.’
Warhol’s version of Monroe, keeping watch against a hot pink background with eyeshadow to match, delivers a touch of 1960s kitsch to the room’s more modern palette. It is one of a series of works the artist created that are based on a single publicity shot, created 50 years before the philosophically similar series of pixelated punks and spiritless simians became all the rage in the blockchain-based non-fungible-token (NFT) market.
This isn’t the most famous of Warhol’s Marilyns. That would be ‘Shot Sage Blue,’ according to famed auction house Christie’s. That version features the image on a light blue background and sold for $195 million last year. The pink iteration comes from Holzer’s personal collection. It was made in 1967 and is marked number 81 out of 250 prints. It is estimated to be worth $531,800.
Marilyn Monroe, the film star who has been iconified, glamourised and rhapsodised, is now becoming fractionalised and tokenised thanks to a Delaware company called Freeport and blockchain technology. Ownership of the pink print is being chopped into 10,000 shares represented by tiny bits of computer code. Developments in technology and finance now make a piece of the portrait available to the art-loving masses for as little as $531.80 for 10 shares, the minimum amount any investor can own.
If this kind of fractionalisation endures, art will become a more viable and accessible asset class for individual investors. But the promise is overshadowed by a digital market that is, in reality, just as illiquid as the analogue ersion it is trying to replace. The process is also loaded with management fees and markups that require serious appreciation for buyers to just get back to even.
The pink Marilyn is part of the initial collection from Freeport. The company is minting shares in each of four Warhol prints as fungible tokens on the Ethereum chain. Freeport is looking for up to 4,000 investors who want to own stakes in screen prints of Marilyn, actor James Dean in his Rebel Without a Cause garb ($198.50), Mick Jagger circa 1975 ($226.30) or a double portrait of Mickey Mouse ($781.80). The prices represent 10% markups on the previous sales of each print. But that is not all. Investors are also paying a 10% procurement fee, 1.5% annual management fee, and a 10% sales fee. Thus, investing $1000 may represent less than $800 in artwork. Buying blockchain enhanced art via Freeport entitles investors to a percentage of future profit from sales of the works and the right to display the tokenised versions in virtual galleries on their computers. A secondary market allows shareholders to sell their stakes to other investors via the Ethereum blockchain.
Three of the Warhols are from Holzer’s collection, and the fourth, Mickey Mouse, is owned by collector Michael Haber.”
The Marilyn Report 