World-renowned auction house Christie’s officially debuted their first on-chain generative art collection titled SOURCE (On NFTs) on Thursday, featuring more than 400 pieces created by crypto and NFT artist Robert Alice.
According to Christie’s website, the works are “a form of digital graffiti” that recasts “the tradition of color field painting” made popular by abstract painters in the mid-nineteenth century “as a celebration of the RGB color spectrum that characterizes for digital art.”
Christie’s and Alice write history with new collection
“Referring to the importance of blockchains as a new form of publishing, and to the idea of NFTs being fundamentally text, the works poetically distill the prehistory of NFTs in large contemporary digital color field paintings,” Christie’s said. “Each work of art, constructed entirely from text, is a collision of two of these source texts, violently collided using NLP algorithms to create new histories.”
Starting at a price of 5 ETH, the cost of each NFT piece will decrease “until all 400 works are sold out or the price lands at the resting price of 0.3 ETH.”
TODAY! The auction for SOURCE [On NFTs]@robertalice_21 starts at 11am EST
Dutch Auction: 11am – 1pm EST
Starting price: 5 ETH, decreasing every 3 minutes 0.175 ETH to 1.5 ETH, then decreasing to 0.06 ETH incrementsMint here: https://t.co/F7zrPFxnEM
— Christie’s (@ChristiesInc) March 12, 2024
“The source material was deliberately selected by the artist to reveal the cultural ecology of the origins of NFTs,” Christie’s continued. “Different histories intertwine to create new meaning, as works of science fiction collide with groundbreaking manifestos from digital art history, while white papers on cryptography collide with Chinese philosophical texts from the 7th century.”
A book for both NFT and art lovers
Alice herself has a rich legacy of art within the crypto space, having originally been the first artist to sell an NFT through Christie’s in October 2020.
The chain’s generative art auction coincides with the release of On NFTs, a physical book edited by Alice with 10 academic essays and illustrated profiles of 101 artists working with NFTs.
On NFTs, published by luxury art book publisher Taschen, offers “a deep dive into the realm of non-fungible tokens” by covering everything from “algorithmic art to avatars.”
“This book is one of the first major research publications on blockchain-based art and the broader cultural ecosystem in the chain,” said Alice.
Works minted at Christie’s for 1.5 Eth or higher will receive a special edition of On NFTs, hand signed by Alice.