1,000 Andy Warhol Sketches Are Now On Sale—999 Of Them Are Fake
Image via MSCHF
An artwork’s value very much depends on its authenticity. The thought of paying the same amount for a Banksy replica as the original, for instance, is pretty absurd.
For these Andy Warhol sketches, however, there’s a one-in-a-1,000 chance you’ll be acquiring the real one. That’s because disruptive art collective MSCHF has thoroughly forged the work, pricing every copy at US$250, so you won’t know if you’re getting an authentic piece or a dupe.
The Brooklyn-based collective, most reputed for launching Nike ‘Satan Shoes’ with Lil Nas X, purchased Warhol’s original Fairies (1954) sketch—featuring a trio of nude fairies playing jump rope—then reproduced 999 forgeries in a stunt it calls the Museum of Forgeries.
While the sketch was sold for US$8,125 at auction house Christie’s in 2016, MSCHF’s chief revenue officer Daniel Greenberg told USA Today that its value now stands at about US$20,000. This means whoever gets the original would unwitting make US$19,750, while everybody else would just own a cool, fairly affordable piece of art.
Video via MSCHF
The copies were produced through an intricate machine-generated replication process on paper, before being chemically aged to mimic the yellowed appearance of the original.
Image via MSCHF
After which, all 1,000 pieces were shuffled in a pile and put up on sale online.
By creating the Museum of Forgeries, the pranksters hope to highlight the apparent snobbery of the art world and its belief that only the wealthy and well-read can own famous artwork.
The project also stresses how so much emphasis is placed on an artwork’s authenticity instead of its aesthetics. “By forging Fairies en masse, we obliterate the trail of provenance for the artwork,” says MSCHF. “Though physically undamaged, we destroy any future confidence in the veracity of the work.”
MSCHF further describes on its website that “by burying a needle in a needlestack, we render the original as much a forgery as any of our replications.”
[via USA Today, images via MSCHF]
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