Picasso heirs launch digital art piece to ride ‘crypto’ wave

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GENEVA (AP) — Pablo, meet Crypto. 

Heirs of Pablo Picas­so, the famed 20th-cen­tu­ry Span­ish artist, are vault­ing into 21st-cen­tu­ry com­merce by sell­ing 1,010 dig­i­tal art pieces of one of his ceram­ic works that has nev­er before been seen pub­licly — rid­ing a fad for “cryp­to” assets that have tak­en the art and finan­cial worlds by storm.

For an exclu­sive inter­view before the for­mal launch this week, Picasso’s grand­daugh­ter, Mari­na Picas­so, and her son Flo­ri­an Picas­so opened up their apart­ment — which is swim­ming in works from their illus­tri­ous ances­tor — in an upscale Gene­va neigh­bor­hood. There they offered up a glimpse, how­ev­er tan­ta­liz­ing­ly slim, of the piece behind what they’re billing as an unprece­dent­ed fusion of old-school fine art and dig­i­tal assets.

They’re look­ing to cash in on and ride a wave of inter­est in non-fun­gi­ble tokens, or NFTs, which have net­ted mil­lions for far-less-known artists and been crit­i­cized by some as envi­ron­men­tal­ly cost­ly get rich schemes.

A Picas­so, his family’s pro­mot­ers say, would mark the entry of a Grand Mas­ter into the game.

In eco­nom­ics jar­gon, a fun­gi­ble token is an asset that can be exchanged on a one-for-one basis. Think of dol­lars or bit­coins — each one has the exact same val­ue and can be trad­ed freely. A non-fun­gi­ble object, by con­trast, has its own dis­tinct val­ue, like an old house or a clas­sic car.

Cross this notion with cryp­tocur­ren­cy tech­nol­o­gy known as the blockchain and you get NFTs. They are effec­tive­ly dig­i­tal cer­tifi­cates of authen­tic­i­ty that can be attached to dig­i­tal art or, well, pret­ty much any­thing else that comes in dig­i­tal form — audio files, video clips, ani­mat­ed stick­ers, even a news arti­cle read online.

“We’re try­ing to build a bridge between the NFT world and the fine art world,” said Flo­ri­an Picas­so, the artist’s great-grandson.

The artist’s descen­dants are play­ing close to the vest, to drum up inter­est and pro­tect — for now — a fam­i­ly heir­loom. They’re show­ing only a sliv­er of the under­side of the work linked to the NFTs, a ceram­ic piece about the size of a large sal­ad bowl. The exposed parts show forms like a thick yel­low line, a drib­bling green splotch, and a brushed-on num­ber “58” at the base.

Mari­na Picas­so says the cher­ished pot­tery piece dates to Octo­ber 1958, when she was a child.

“It’s a work that rep­re­sents a face, and it’s very expres­sive,” she said. “It’s joy­ful, hap­py. It rep­re­sents life … It’s one of those objects that have been part of our life, our inti­mate lives — my life with my children.”

Sotheby’s is host­ing an auc­tion in March that will include a unique NFT as well as the actu­al ceram­ic bowl. A first-phase, online sale of more than 1,000 oth­er NFTs starts Fri­day through the Nifty Gate­way and Ori­gin Pro­to­col platforms.

Flo­ri­an Picas­so said they agreed on the col­or­ful ceram­ic piece because it was “a fun one” to start.

An NFT Picas­so brings with it almost epochal sym­bol­ism, some­thing like when the Bea­t­les col­lec­tion was final­ly put up on iTunes. The fam­i­ly and its busi­ness man­agers say the aim is to cre­ate a younger com­mu­ni­ty of Picas­so fans.

“Every­thing is evolv­ing,” said Flo­ri­an Picas­so, insist­ing that the NFT hon­ors the great artist.

“I think it fits with­in Picasso’s lega­cies because we are pay­ing trib­ute to him and his way of work­ing, which was always being cre­ative,” he said. 

How quaint seem those days of yore when Picas­so, as the leg­end has it, would sim­ply doo­dle on a nap­kin as pay­ment for a restau­rant meal — his hand­i­work sup­pos­ed­ly car­ry­ing a val­ue far in excess of the cost of the food and drinks he had enjoyed. 

Some of the pro­ceeds will be donat­ed — one por­tion to a char­i­ty that aims to help over­come a short­age of nurs­es, and anoth­er to a non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion that wants to help reduce car­bon in the atmos­phere. The NFTs will also come with music put togeth­er by Flo­ri­an Picas­so, who is a DJ and music pro­duc­er, along with song­writer John Leg­end and rap­per Nas. 

Even a full ren­der­ing of that track isn’t being pub­licly released just yet: Flo­ri­an Picas­so played a snip­pet for a reporter, then turned it off.

“And to hear more, you got­ta pur­chase the NFT,” he quipped. 

___

AP video jour­nal­ist Boris Heger con­tributed to this report.

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