Art Market Report - June 18
A weekly report on the NFT Art Market, covering 1/1s, generative art, editions and other important news.
Grails Part II @ Sotheby’s
At the close of Grails Part II on June 15, all 37 NFTs exceeded their high estimates with the grand total of ~$11 million. According to an Artnet article (“A Crypto Spring?” by Richard Whiddington), more than 50% of buyers at the sale were under 40, and 61% were new to Sotheby’s. While Sotheby’s has succeeded in capturing a different, younger clientele by moving into the NFT space, whether a meaningful number of trad art collectors have hence entered the NFT space remains to be seen.
Dmitri Cherniak’s Ringers #879 (The Goose) ultimately sold for $6.2 million to 6529 (“6529 Fund with participation from the 6529 Museum”), double its pre-sale high estimate. It’s now the second most expensive work of generative art after Ringers #109 (which sold for 2,100 ETH in Oct 2021, ~$7.1 million day of txn). The Goose was first collected by pixelpete in Feb 2021 for 1.26 ETH, then collected by 3AC (under the advice of VincentVanDough) for 1,800 ETH in August 2021. 6529 wrote a thread about the backstory of him trying to hunt down The Goose since August 2021, which he wanted as one of the three NFTs to be “the cornerstones of the 6529 Museum”.
The work was bought by Three Arrows Capital in 2021 for $5.8 million and holds particular cache within the digital art community for the fact the algorithm has miraculously created a work resembling a goose. By comparison, the other three “Ringers” sold for a combined total of less than $500,000.
Punk 6529 expressed this sense of awe in a statement following their latest Blue Chip NFT acquisition. “Once the algorithm is committed to the blockchain, nobody knows what outputs it will produce. The Goose represents this more clearly than any generative NFT. We could have run the Ringers mint thousands of times without producing anything like it again.”
“A Crypto Spring?” by Richard Whiddington
Or, the power of the meme, as Cozomo wrote in his newsletter Medici Minutes.
Other 5 biggest sales from Grails Part II:
Snowfro’s Chromie Squiggle #1780 (Perfect Spectrum) sold for 635,000 USD, 3X the high estimate.
Tyler Hobbs’ Fidenza #479 sold for 622,300 USD.
Tyler Hobbs’ Fidenza #216 sold for 609,600 USD.
Kjetil Golid’s Archetype #397 sold for 330,200 USD.
Larva Labs’ Autoglyph #218 sold for 330,200 USD.
There were more than 300 works from 3AC’s collection green lit for sale and Sotheby’s has confirmed that more auctions will be taking place across the summer. You can check out 3AC’s collection here on OpenSea.
VincentVanDough, the curator/collector who assembled this collection of grails for 3AC, wrote in a thread the day after the sale: “I think its important to highlight that these sales do not reflect the reality of the broader digital art market at present, where most artists are currently struggling to make ends meet… Moving forward I hope to see more collectors expand their horizons and understanding of art, and start supporting unknown artists and innovation.”
1/1s
AI Generated Nude Portrait #7 Frame #53 was collected for 299 ETH on SuperRare’s secondary market.
Five Eyes by XCOPY was collected by Mexpert for 137.35 ETH on fractional.art.
La Calle, a collection by Alex Webb, the legendary photographer, member of Magnum Photos since 1976, had 33.8 ETH total sales this week on Foundation.
precious moments by die with the most likes was collected by Artifaction for 12 ETH on SuperRare.
Forgotten Battle Residue by Botto was collected by ATS for 5.005 ETH on SuperRare.
Fragments of the Dreams: A Surrealist Vision
The photography show featuring Ben Zank, Brooke DiDonato, Cowboy Killer, Iness Rychlik, Israel Riqueros, Samantha Cavet, Summer Wagner, curated by me, will open on June 22, at 0x.17 Gallery, Seaport NYC.
Join us for the opening night on June 22, 6-8pm, RSVP HERE.