(New York) The New York collective which made itself known in the spring with the “satanic” sneakers supposed to contain a drop of blood, did it again this week by selling 1000 copies of a drawing by Andy Warhol at the same price, only one of which is the original.
On a website called the Museum of Forgeries, the MSCHF collective claims to have bought a 1954 drawing by the master of pop art, Fairies, which he estimates at $ 20,000, to have produced 999 exact replicas and to have mixed the original with the fakes, while ensuring that he no longer knows where “the good” Warhol is.
On sale Monday, the 1,000 copies of what MSCHF considers to be a new work, titled Maybe a real copy of Andy Warhol’s fairies, “Were all sold on the same day” 250 dollars each, affirmed the collective.
MSCHF (pronounced “Mischief”, mischief in English) has uploaded a video showing the technique used: a robotic arm to copy the drawing, a process of “artificial aging” using light and heat, then manual reproduction the seal of the Warhol Foundation and the annotations in pencil, explained one of the members, Kevin Wiesner, in an email to AFP.
“If a (art) curator was able to inspect each drawing side by side, he would eventually discover the original, but that scenario is unlikely to happen,” he added.
Beyond a juicy financial transaction, with total sales amounting to $ 250,000, MSCHF says it wants to criticize the concepts of “authenticity” and “exclusivity” that predominate in the art market, for example this operation of “locking” a work of Warhol. “Our goal is to ‘destroy’ the design by breaking the chain of trust,” says Kevin Wiesner.
Contacted by AFP, the Warhol Foundation did not immediately react.
MSCHF, a collective created in 2016 and based in Brooklyn, specializes in operations for the reappropriation of works of art or commercial objects.
One of the latest, the creation and sale of the “satanic” sneakers (for $ 1,018 a pair) whose soles were believed to contain a drop of human blood, in partnership with American rapper Lil Nas X, led the original manufacturer of the model, Nike, to sue MSCHF for infringement and brand dilution.
The collective then resolved to recall the “Satan shoes”.