The [Crypto] Art of the Experiment
Tags: Painting, Cryptoart, Art Market, Blockchain, Art

“Painting, sculpture, and all manner physical art are dead.

Long live painting, sculpture, and physical art.”

-Montbland

Just kidding… not really.

On Sunday, September 20, 2020, I formally made the transition from selling physical art (large scale oil paintings), to digital “cryptoart” on the blockchain.

It was eye-opening.

And what was super fun, is that I didn’t sell just one digital painting; I sold FIVE. In the span of two hours. But I’ll come back to that…

First though, imagine someone telling your future-self in the year 2048: “Oh, ya know, we kinda got so futuristic as a society, with robots, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, that we sort of had to put all that physical art in storage.”

While this theoretically could happen, as humans I don’t think we’ll ever stop falling in love with physical paintings, or art that was expertly crafted by human hands, with raw materials.

It’s in our nature.

Figuration, for example, is arguably why painting (as an art form) was created. One of my painting heroes, famously once said:

“Flesh is the reason oil paint was invented”. -Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning and his wife, Elaine

I tend to agree. But physical paintings also have their own… physical limitations.

And our affection for tangible art should not hold us back from embracing new artistic mediums. Whether we are artists, collectors, enthusiasts, students, educators, gallerists, dealers, curators, or investors.

Especially if those new mediums categorically challenge the art world industrial complex / status quo.

I’m no an art historian… but last time I checked art has never been about maintaining the status quo. If anything, artists are professional status quo destroyers. That’s how they create value.

You may already know the blockchain is useful, or that Bitcoin is super important and eating the financial world, or that CryptoArt is in its infancy stages of becoming a mega-important emerging asset class.

I started paying attention to Bitcoin back in 2012 when it was still viewed largely as an experiment. Fortunately for us today, there are extremely smart people who can help you learn about all that stuff, and you can learn from them for free! Here’s a few notable people that I pay attention to:

@PlanB, @RaoulGMI, @APomliano, @DanHeld, @PrestonPysh, @LauraShin, @JeffBooth, @PeterMcCormack, to name a few.

And for your reference:

Currently, CryptoArt is only available to purchase on a handful of websites, like SuperRare, KnownOrigin, Rarible, Nifty Gateway, MakersPlace, OpenSea, and Async Art.

That’s me on the right. One of my oil paintings, ‘Shark Week’ was purchased by a collector for $4,900 🍾

As a painter, to bridge the gap between the traditional art world and the CryptoArt world, I knew I had to do something NEW, innovative, and FUN.

So I decided that I would price all of my digital art using an extremely non-typical, yet utterly simple strategy.

Here’s what I’m doing:

I’m creating a series of 250 (single edition only) digital paintings.

Each will be priced exactly 0.01 ETH higher than the previous.

That’s it.

Digital Painting #1 = 0.01 ETH

Digital Painting #2 = 0.02 ETH

Digital Painting #3 = 0.03 ETH

Digital Painting #68 = 0.68 ETH

Digital Painting #142 = 1.42 ETH

Digital Painting #250 = 2.5 ETH

After I announced a “pre-sale” late night on Twitter, the DM’s began flooding in. There was way more demand than supply, so I had to operate on a first-come / first-serve basis.

Here’s what happened…

‘Actinomyces Citreofluorescens’

#1 of 250

Sold for 0.01 ETH / $3.42

to @burst_cryptoart

‘Bacteroides Pneumosintes’

#2 of 250

Sold for 0.02 ETH / $6.84

to @burst_cryptoart

‘Confluentimicrobium Naphthalenivorans’

#3 of 250

Sold for 0.03 ETH / $10.26

to @Kyloren_NFT

‘Dethiosulfovibrio Acidaminovorans’

#4 of 250

Sold for 0.04 ETH / $13.68

to @kokokocrypto

‘Epilithonimonas Psychrotolerans’

#5 of 250

Sold for 0.05 ETH / $17.09

to @punk_cipher

IT WAS OVER IN A FLASH.

The first tranche of the pre-sale, 5 paintings, sold instantly. The full pre-sale will allocate 10% of the project, 25 digital paintings, to be made available to collectors who express interest directly on Twitter. I’m @Montbland, my DM’s are open.

Once the private pre-sale is over, new artwork releases will be extremely limited in quantity each week. Each new digital painting will be announced on Twitter, where / how to purchase it, and will adhere strictly to the pricing schedule described herein.

100% fixed prices / no auctions. The model will apply until #250 is sold. In terms of new projects, I may re-employ the same strategy… we’ll see.

Collectors routinely ask me, ‘What do these paintings mean?’. What I can share you is that each one is named after bacteria. Bacteria is everywhere, and life couldn’t exist without it. More than 20,000 strains have been identified by scientists and biologists.

Final thought. Art is meant to uplift the human experience and to be enjoyed. My goal for everyone who participates in this project is to have fun, and to watch what happens.

#DontSleepOnCryptoArt

Montbland