Art Market Report - November 19
A weekly report on the NFT Art Market, covering 1/1s, generative art, editions and other important news.
We are not back yet, but certain categories of art are definitely starting to move more than others, or have been consistently defying the bear market for the past year or two. Notably: 1) historic works minted in 2018-2020 by OG crypto artists (Trevor Jones, XCOPY, Hackatao…); 2) meme art (GeoMetric Pepes by batz, Sgt. Pepe by Arsonic…); and of course, 3) generative and AI art. The collecting behavior during the pre-bull market shows what savvy collectors consider as the essence of the crypto art movements - its history, meme culture, and technology.
1/1s
EthBoy, a historic collaboration between OG crypto artists Trevor Jones and the late Alotta Money, minted on AsyncArt in November 2020, was collected by Nick Tomaino for 200 ETH on the secondary market. It’s a programmable piece that updates once a day to reflect ETH/USD, BTC/USD and Ethereum network gas prices.
Trevor Jones wrote on his website in 2020:
I was excited about the concept of this painting changing daily in response to external variables out of ours or anyone else’s control. The fact that the price of Ethereum has rocketed over 4x in the last year along with occasionally eye watering Eth gas fees instigating uproar, discussion and debate and inspiring new cryptoart all contributed to the decision to create this piece on AsyncArt at this time.
Nick Tomaino commented in a tweet:
This programmable piece of cryptoart by @trevorjonesart and @money_alotta (RIP) is a classic Ethereum artifact. We just added it to the @1confirmation collection. Programmable cryptoart that changes based on real world events like the price of ETH is unique to the medium. EthBoy was the first on Async minted over 3 years ago. We are just scratching the surface 🙏
GeoMetric Pepes by batz had 3 sales in the past week, a total 17.96 ETH. Launched over a year ago, GeoMetric Pepes (a collection of 100 1/1s) is, in my opinion, one of the best collections in the space that embodies “the intersection of memes and fine art.”
In the same week, Noise from The Nine (a series of self reflections, 9 1/1s), was collected by gGFunk for 11 ETH on the secondary market.
Black Mountain Temple by Jimi Wen had 7 sales on Foundation in the past week, a total of 28 ETH.
Emoji Waahp by Hackatao was collected for 7.77 ETH on SuperRare’s secondary market. It was previously sold for 0.4 ETH in April 2019. (Although it is arguably an edition of 7 instead of a 1/1, minted in April 2018 when probably before SuperRare had set to become a platform for 1/1s.)
Anonymous collector acquires 7 significant works by XCOPY, Tyler Hobbs and Dmitri Cherniak from the Starry Night Collection via Sotheby’s. Price is undisclosed. According to Michael Bouhanna, Head of Digital Art at Sotheby’s, "It’s a real collectors’ market with strong convictions and a growing appetite for historic and blue chip works." (reported by RD) Michael Bouhanna also wrote in a tweet that “I see a growing interest in historic and blue-chip works. Over the past two months, I've managed to sell over $6 million worth of digital art, including a $1/1.5M sale on a single piece - all through private sales.”
GENERATIVE & AI ART
The First Sparks of Artificial Creativity by Pindar Van Arman, a 1/1/128 series of works that was the first to use SuperRare's new lazy minting auction mechanic, sold out for 1 ETH each within 2 minutes. Noteworthily, to incentivize secondary sales on SuperRare to ensure artist royalty, Pindar offered the first 50 buyers/sellers who bought/sold on SuperRare’s secondary market for ≥ 1 ETH a signed physical print, which showed a very positive result: 28 secondary sales on SuperRare vs. 12 on OpenSea at the time of writing.
Seating Arrangements by Luke Shannon (edition of 220) sold out on Tonic. It’s a collection that uses code to create digital schematics for chairs. These digital files are then used to create full-sized wooden chairs that serve both form and function. This rigorously, mathematically defined set of chairs interfaces with a fundamentally human problem of “can I sit in it?”
Fidenza #732 was collected for 79 ETH.
EDITIONS
2 big XCOPY edition sales. hello admin dm me (2019, edition of 20) was collected for 35 ETH and The State of Us (blue) (2019, edition of 20) collected for 30.349 ETH. Two comments I find interesting:
One from BBA.eth:
What most people fail to observe is that XCOPY editions, especially the ones that were minted on KnownOrigin, form a very special market that does not follow the rules of most NFT collections. What I mean is that there are very few listings (14/575 at the time of writing) and some of the most desirable editions are actually "locked" in the collection of diamond hands holders that do not seem to have the desire to sell and will probably never need the money... With every purchase like the one quoted, each edition become closer to being locked, as buyers are unlikely to look for a quick flip but rather own work from what is probably one of the most important living artists.
The other one from Daimon.eth:
Seeing some grails starting to move. Wouldn’t be surprised if big players (institutions or emerging new collectors who felt the spider web lines from the crypto pump start to reverberate out into the ether) are arriving to snatch up the low hanging grail fruit. The next 12-18 months should be interesting 🍿
Physical prints Warothy (edition of 25) by Alpha Centauri Kid is available by draw on Avant Arte for €5.000. Each print is paired with an animated NFT of the same artwork. Warothy translates the artist’s otherworldly digital creations into a lenticular print edition – a physical manifestation of his renowned glitch art.
Celebrating year 1 of Sgt. Pepe (edition of 420) 🎉 Card 2 of The Memes by 6529, as well as the 2nd most expensive one. It carries one of the most important messages of the project: FREEDOM TO TRANSACT.
10 1/1s to Collect on SuperRare This Week
Well done 🚀