Yesterday, auction house Sotheby’s announced it will auction the ‘Starry Night’ digital art collection from January 23rd to 30th. The ‘Starry Night’ collection is connected to the GRAILS set, which did more than $20 million in sales earlier this year, and is part of defunct Three Arrows Capital (3AC) treasure trove of digital art.
The collection, which was curated by pseudonymous NFT collector Vincent Van Dough, features many top artworks from the likes of XCOPY, Otherworld, Mike Winkelmann (Beeple), Dmitri Cherniak, and Helena Sarin. Some of the highlight works include:
- The Garden by Otherworld: A reinterpretation of 19th century painting The Last Day of Pompeii with distinctly 21st century vibes. Otherworld is known for infusing art iconography with bright colors and hooded figures known as ‘fiends.’
- til death do us part by Alpha Centauri Kid: The artist made waves in 2021 with a collection on the platform SuperRare. Many of his works change throughout time and will only cease changing when the artist passes away.
- Iterations II by Kjetil Golid: Part of a series that attempts to create structure within randomly generated orders of blocks, which move in two directions. Golid has over a decade of experience in computational art.
- K-Meanearest Neighbors by Helena Sarin: An output created in combination of Sarin and Cherniak, it explores a pipeline of neural networks. Sarin finds inspiration within unifying patterns of nature and computation.
Michael Bouhanna, Sotheby’s Head of Digital Art, said in a statement shared with Rarity Sniper that the Starry Night collection was formed during a unique time in the digital art market that probably will never be replicated.
3AC went bankrupt after the infamous $LUNA collapse in 2022. Many blame it for causing a contagion in the crypto space, leading to the demise of other firms. Since then, one of its founders has been arrested.
Sotheby’s Bullish on Web3 Art
While many probably don’t view auction houses — especially those founded in the 18th century — as lean, green innovating machines, Sotheby’s has been at the forefront of Web3 adoption, taking steps into this nascent technology space for some time. Here are some of the highlights that we’ve covered about it in the past couple of years:
- Auctioned a real-world Miami mansion as a non-fungible token
- Partnered with Liverpool FC to auction official team NFTs
- Held an NFT auction based off a popular subreddit called “oddly satisfying”
- Debuted a peer-to-peer, on-chain NFT fine art marketplace
- Was put in charge of selling 3AC’s various art NFT collections
- Sold Cherniak’s “The Goose” Ringers NFT for $6.2 million
- Celebrated its 300-year anniversary by partnering with Art Blocks
- Auctioned Grant Yun’s ‘The Last Supper’ NFT in a contemporary curated sale
- Held the first auction of Bitcoin Ordinals with the BitcoinShrooms sale
Sotheyby’s has been very active in the space, seeing the possibility of Web3 even as many art critics have panned non-fungible tokens as the latest fad that wouldn’t have a lasting impact on art. Yesterday’s news, that it will be auctioning 3AC’s Starry Night collection, confirms that attitude and bodes well for the Web3 space overall.