NFT Platform to Digitally Divide Banksy Artwork Into 10,000 NFTs to Sell at Auction

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Banksy’s “Love is in the Air.”


Particle

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Par­ti­cle, a plat­form for non­fun­gi­ble tokens strad­dling fine art and tech­nol­o­gy that was co-found­ed by for­mer Christie’s post-war and con­tem­po­rary art chair­man Loïc Gouzer, announced this week that Banksy’s Love is in the Air is the first work it will dig­i­tal­ly divvy up and sell at auction. 

“Banksy has turned the art world on its head. Wide­ly regard­ed as one of the most icon­ic cre­ators of the 21st century—his dar­ing, human­i­tar­i­an nature and strong belief that art should be for every­one reflects the mis­sion at Par­ti­cle, mak­ing this mas­ter­piece sym­bol­ic to launch the plat­form with,” Gouzer said in a statement.

Par­ti­cle paid US$12.9 mil­lion at a Sotheby’s auc­tion in May for the paint­ing depict­ing a pro­test­er poised to lob a bou­quet. “The Flower Throw­er,” as the work is also known, will be seg­ment­ed into 10,000 par­ti­cles using a 100-by-100 grid and sold to bid­ders as NFTs. 

“Each par­ti­cle will cost approx­i­mate­ly US$1,500,” and bid­ders can “def­i­nite­ly” buy more than one, Par­ti­cle CEO Harold
Eytan
said in an email. Inter­est­ed buy­ers can apply from Dec. 13 and sign up for the wait­list before the pri­ma­ry sale begin­ning the week of Jan. 10–14.

Buy­ers can’t choose their par­ti­cles, which are ran­dom­ly allo­cat­ed. Nonethe­less, they will receive grid coor­di­nates for their pur­chase and a card illus­trat­ing ownership.

“Once you are an own­er of a Par­ti­cle it is up to you to do what you please with it,” Eytan says, adding that if that means sell­ing it “they can do so via a vari­ety of sec­ondary mar­ket­places, or on Particle’s own marketplace.” 

Love Is in the Air’s mob own­er­ship recalls efforts by the cryp­tocur­ren­cy col­lec­tive Con­sti­tu­tion­DAO, which raised US$40 mil­lion through crowd­fund­ing, to buy a rare copy of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion at Sotheby’s last month. The group was out­bid by Citadel CEO
Ken­neth Griffin.
 

R. A. Far­rokhnia, Colum­bia Busi­ness School pro­fes­sor and exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Colum­bia Fin­tech Ini­tia­tive, regards Particle’s Love Is in the Air auc­tion “as a nat­ur­al exten­sion of the the­o­ry of dis­trib­uted own­er­ship that we have been for­mu­lat­ing and tech­nolo­gies we have been build­ing for the past five to ten years. Now we will see how the real mar­ket­place will behave and how par­tic­i­pants will act.”

To Eytan, “group own­er­ship means com­mu­ni­ty and shared com­mon val­ues. This is a new col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence, one that rede­fines how peo­ple enjoy fine art,” he says. “There is this con­cept that own­er­ship increas­es the enjoy­ment of art. It’s not real­ly that it puts lux­u­ry in everyone’s reach per se, but allows a wider com­mu­ni­ty to express them­selves via col­lect­ing fine art masterpieces.”

Love is in the Air will be on view at “First Fri­days” on Dec. 3 at the Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary Art, Mia­mi, dur­ing Mia­mi Art Week. After the auc­tion, the non­prof­it Par­ti­cle Foun­da­tion will receive the actu­al art­work along with 1% of the par­ti­cles in order to be, accord­ing to a release, “a pro­tec­tive shard and ensure no one per­son can envi­sion claim­ing pos­ses­sion of the phys­i­cal paint­ing.” The foun­da­tion will also get a share of the roy­al­ty rev­enue con­tribut­ing to that assurance.

“The foun­da­tion will nev­er sell the phys­i­cal work of art,” Eytan says. “The whole point of this project is to build the great­est col­lec­tion in the world, owned dig­i­tal­ly by the com­mu­ni­ty, and pre­served phys­i­cal­ly by the foundation.”

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