“ It was immediately clear it would be a major artwork both for its contemporaneous and historical comment arsenic well as the bewitching combination of disciplines, ” Barrett White of Christie ’ sulfur Americas told The Post .
“ White Male for Sale ” is the creation of artist-provocateur Dread Scott. The work consists of a 70-second loop video recording showing an average-looking white man in white button-down shirt and black pants, deadpan, standing on an auction blockage in the center of a busy Brooklyn overlap .
Black pedestrians wearing coronavirus masks pass him by. The setting was shot at Flatbush and Church Avenues.
“ The White Male for Sale NFT makes the medium itself an built-in and substantive character of the conceptual project, ” Scott, 56, said in an explanation of his work on Instagram. “ People are inherently non-fungible. But as bondage became an integral partially of developing capitalism, enslavers sought to turn people into commodities and make them fungible. ”
Artist Dread Scott created the “White Male for Sale” NFT. Getty Images for Kickstarter An NFT is a singular and non-transferable data unit that can be stored on a digital ledger known as a blockchain — the lapp technology which powers cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin .
Christie ’ south refused to speculate about what it might sell for but the auction house has developed a niche in America ’ s burgeoning NFT marketplace. In March the company sold an NFT by the digital artist Mike Winkelmann ( aka Beeple ) for $ 69 million .
Scott did not respond to multiple requests for gossip from The Post, but he told Art Net that his work could be worth union of $ 2 million — suggesting he has made peace with at least some parts of capitalism.
“ While Male for Sale ” will be auctioned on Oct. 1 in at Christie ’ s auction firm at 20 Rockefeller Plaza .
The study has already stirred controversy among fellow artists, like Manhattan cougar David Paul Kay, who blasted the NFT as “ cheap ” and “ pathetic. ”
“ He is fair trying to cash out. This is not fixing the problem he is talking about. It ’ randomness literally making it worse, ” Kay, who is white, told The Post. “ This guy is barely an opportunist. I don ’ t like to bash early artists. I don ’ metric ton like to do that. ”
It ’ south far from Scott ’ s inaugural controversy. Past works featured on his web site include “ Burning the Constitution, ” and “ Perpetual 911, ” which repeatedly shows a plane crashing into and then reversing out of 2 World Trade Center.
“ I don ’ triiodothyronine accept the economic foundation, the social relations or the governing ideas of America, ” Scott said in a 2018 TED talk .
A 1989 slice, “ What Is the proper Way to Display an american english Flag ? ” featured the ease up laid out on the floor therefore people could step on it. The parade was condemned by then-President George H.W. Bush after being displayed in Chicago at the School of the Art Institute. The Senate subsequently passed a bill forbidding the piece from being shown again .
“ I signed on to [ the charge ]. We don ’ t need people desecrating the flag. It ’ s incorrectly and morally condemnable, ” retired New York Sen. Al D ’ Amato told The Post .
