Fancy owning a Turner? You can... digitally
In new craze where you buy art you can never hang on a wall:
ART collectors will soon have the chance to own their very own Turner masterpiece.
Yet the lucky bidders in this auction will struggle to hang theirs on a wall as the British Museum is selling the rarely seen collection as nonfungible tokens (NFTs), a bizarre concept which gives the owner a digital certificate of the work.
It means they not only won’t own the physical painting, but won’t be allowed to even touch it either.
Some 20 paintings by the revered artist that have rarely exhibited will go on sale as NFTs next month, with the sale closing on March 5.
The collection was bequeathed by Robert Wylie Lloyd, a former chairman of the auction house Christie’s who died in 1958. A keen art collector, he had specified that paintings should never be leant and could only be shown for a fortnight in February or by special request.
The British Museum is collaborating with French start-up LaCollection, which provides a platform for people to buy NFTs from museums and galleries across the world. In September, they worked together to sell NFTs of paintings by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai – his most famous work, Under The Wave Of Kanagawa, fetched £33,000.
NFTs, usually paid for with cryptocurrency, are a unique unit of data linked to some form of media – from songs to works of art – stored on a digital ledger.
The most expensive recorded sale is the £58million paid for a piece by digital artist Beeple – the third-highest auction price ever achieved for a living artist, behind Jeff Koons and David Hockney.
Artists, celebrities, and sport stars have been jumping on the NFT bandwagon to sell various memorabilia or pieces of work. Last year, Sir Tim Berners-Lee sold the original source code for the world wide web as an NFT for £3.9million, with the proceeds going to charity – surpassing the £2million spent on Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet.
The Turner paintings include A Storm (Shipwreck) from 1823 and Messieurs Les Voyageurs On Their Return From Italy, completed in 1829. Nine of the works will be considered ‘ultra rare’, with only two NFTs created – one held by the buyer, the other by the British Museum. Seven will be ‘super rare’, with ten NFTs, and four will be ‘open edition’, with a maximum of 99 NFTs.