Albrecht Dürer’s iconic 1515 Artwork “The Rhinoceros” has been re -interpreted as a set of 11 Sterling silver sculptures by Asprey Studio, who will each be sold in addition to a digital inscription on the Bitcoin Blockchain.
Produced by Asprey Studio in collaboration with the British Museum, which possesses the original preparatory sketch of Dürer for the woodcut, the sculptures are accompanied by an “A parent/child’s Conditions that prevents further additions and serves as a modern family tree of origin” Decrypt.
Rhinoceros from Asprey Studio. Silver sculpture. Image: Asprey Studio
“It is registered in ordinals, in [a] Full block, ”said Aspery Studio Chief Creative Officer Ali Walker Decodeer. He explained that: “It is a parent/child inpatient, so the parents are Aspery Studio and the British Museum, and the child is the actual work.”
Buyers first receive the digital inscription, said Walker, because it takes a few months to make the silver sculpture, which is produced to order. Creating the 40 cm solid silver sculptures was a challenge, he explained because of the unique properties of the metal.
“We have digital sculptures in Asprey Studio,” he said. “So we first scoured it digitally, and then we worked out how we cut it into small, manageable pieces.” Those pieces are then welded together, a months of process that “only a few people in the UK” can do, said Walker.
Sculpture of Asprey Studios “Rhinoceros”. Image: Asprey Studio
Dürer, artistic pioneer
Albrecht Dürer was born in 1471 and was one of the pioneers of the German Renaissance and combined the emerging technology of printing with new discoveries in optics and anatomy to produce revolutionary works.
Dürer’s groundbreaking “Rhinoceros” print was completed without the artist actually saw a live rhino, instead based his work on a description of a Portuguese merchant newsletter.
Albrecht Dürer, “The Rhinoceros,” 1515, Pen and Brown Ink, 27.4 x 42 cm (© The Trustees of the British Museum, London)
“In his time he was so advanced,” said Walker Decrypt. “Not only as an artist; he did self -portraits at a time when no one else was, he did logging prints and he earned money from printing his own work.”
He was also an early adopter of modern branding, the design of a monogram based on his initials that acted as his own logo and “brought the first art -specific lawsuit of intellectual property in Venice”, said “The Art of Fevery” author Noah Charney.
In one memorable screed, Dürer opposed print makers who made unauthorized copies of his work and the “Pilferers of the brains of other men” accused of laying their “thief -like hands on my works”.
“Not only will your goods be seized,” Dürer warned the Renaissance IP thieves, “but your bodies were also placed in a mortal danger.”
Dürer, Suggerde Walker, would be at home in the modern art world, where digital artists use NFTs to establish and struggle with the implications of AI on copyright works. “It’s fascinating,” he said, “and it fits a bit in the whole idea of digital inscription.”
Walker was to emphasize that “Dürers drawing is not suddenly an NFT, just because it is on the blockchain” and noted that “we create a completely new interpretation of the piece, and the original Dürer drawing of” The Rhinoceros “is actually owned by the museum.”
“It’s slightly different dynamics,” he said. “Digital art is the thing, and it actually retains the piece on the blockchain, so it will take forever.”
The British Museum and Web3
For its part, the British Museum is no stranger to web3 technology. In 2021, the venerable institution collaborated with French Startup -Lac collection to launch a series of NFTs on the basis of artworks from the collection, including Hokusai and Turner.
Two years later, it joined the Metaverse Gaming Platform The Sandbox, with plans to offer “new compelling experiences” in addition to his own metaille space in the online game world.
Published by Andrew Hayward