Originally published at: 1000 Warhol drawings were sold at $250 each but only one was real | Boing Boing
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It’s already sold out? Boing Boing, I needed you!
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MSCHF, the collective behind this, does all sorts of wonderfully weird things:
They have a new “drop” every other week, they have an app that will notify you.
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I can’t help but think that Warhol would approve.
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That’s very Warholian…
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Absolutely. One of the main reasons there are so many Warhol paintings in circulation in the first place is because he farmed out so much of the work to assistants. It’s not for nothing that his studio was nicknamed “The Factory.”
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I always thought that Warhol was always more about the idea than the aesthetics of art. I remember something about him going to a gallery show and seeing an intricate painting. As he looked at it, his only comment was a sidemouth: “that’s so creative.” I’m sure he would love this idea.
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But did they mint an NFT of the original and perhaps each different copy to also sell?
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Just curious, how would this not count as an illegal, private lottery?
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I think of Warhol as one member of a long line of artists who forced the gallery world to contemplate the question “what IS ‘fine art?’” Occupying a spot in art history somewhere between Duchamp’s “Fountain” and Banksy’s stencil paintings.
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I seem to recall that Warhol did just that: design a piece, hire other artists to execute it, and sell it as a Warhol creation, though everyone knew he had never touched it. Come to think of it, isn’t that what Martha Stewart does?
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I think it definitely does, if a DA somewhere cared to make the case.
In every state in the US and many other countries, you cannot have a random drawing that costs money to enter and returns more than the cost of entry. It has to be either a game of skill (which is why fast food games and the like always have a little math problem on the winnings claim form) or entry must be free to all (which is why raffles and the like technically have to allow entry to anyone, not just attendees of the event and always have some Byzantine postcard entry process for non-attendees in the fine print).
Content creators (of which I am one) run into this a lot, because doing giveaways of promotional items to your viewers is a common thing. However you can’t do it for only your subscribers, for example. That makes it a lottery. Most get around this by doing a photo caption contest or similar rather than a random drawing. Otherwise you have to open it up to the entire internet to avoid running afoul of the laws in many countries.
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I’m the furthest thing from an art or IP lawyer, but… wouldn’t the very act of the Possibly Real Copy of ‘Fairies’ By Andy Warhol being part of this performance piece imbue it with value? If you think that value is worth $250 then you’re not getting any less than what you paid for (and possibly, getting more? maybe?).
It’s like, if you sell 1000 cereal boxes for $5 and one of them has the Commander Cody Junior Agent Secret Decoder Ring (worth $5000) in it, it’s not an illegal lottery as long as you can argue that the cereal itself is worth $5.
I really don’t know.
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Can’t wait for these to start turning up on Pawn Stars.
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I don’t think it counts as a lottery. You’re still buying a drawing whether or not it turns out to be the original. If that counts as a lottery then so does buying a pack of Pokémon cards or a chocolate bar that may or may not contain a golden ticket.
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I’m going to guess that it depends on state law, but with many promotions, such as prizes printed on the underside of a bottle cap, there are rules that allow you to enter for prizes without purchase (through convoluted rules designed to make it awkward to do so) to legally prevent the promotion from being illegal gambling.
The San Francisco Bay Dream House Raffle is also legal; it gets away with being gambling by having a charitable beneficiary, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. So there are loopholes.
cough… cough… Dale Chihuly.
Man does some very good work, and does some very good things through the foundation (Hilltop artists etc…), but if you plonked down $$$ on a Chihuly original, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the actual artist has laid hands on the piece at some point.
I wonder… when I was a kid (80’s) I swear I remember some of the contests where you had to buy a product to see if it had “the code” on it to win would often have a section in the fine print where you could also just send a self addressed stamped envelope (S.A.S.E. you don’t see that acronym so much anymore) and get a game piece.
