You can now own an authentic Picasso for $500. Sounds too good to be true? Well, sort of!
A group of artists have purchased a $34,000 Picasso plate, created multiple replicas, mixed the original with the reproductions, and are selling all of them for $500 each on their website.
The art world has long been plagued by the pretentiousness of those who collect and display world renowned pieces in their living rooms. Often wealthy individuals who, in abundance of money and lack of meaning, pursue those unique little pieces of “exclusivity” that signal their superiority in the upper layers of society. Usually by paying absurd amounts of money.
A group of artists have decided to expose the hypocrisy with a simple experiment: The group of three have purchased a $34,000 Picasso plate, which they developed a method of replicating with the help of a long-time friend and ceramics aficionado.
The original plate will then be sold among the reproductions as indistinguishable pieces, in a stunt that renders all of them equally authentic and inauthentic at the same time; a Schrodinger’s paradox in art form, one might add. The pieces are to be sold for $500 each on a date to be set later this year, to those who join the mail list on the group’s website.
“At the end of the day, every participant ends up with a piece that might as well be an authentic Picasso”. Even better, a conversation piece that decorates the house, lurking in a corner ready to attract the interest of guests and become the spark of enthralling conversations.
This project follows in the footsteps of MSCHF, a collective that had first conceived and brought this idea to life in two separate occasions; the first time by replicating a print of Andy Warhol in 2021, and again a few months ago by reproducing 250 copies of a tiny Picasso wooden piece. Both endeavors ended in massive success, giving way to projects like “The missing balloon” by Banksy, as well as this one.
The argument has been made numerous times that people don’t care about the art itself anymore. “The picture says nothing”. What’s on the canvas is irrelevant. For these people, what matters is the metadata of the piece; the paperwork, provenance, notoriety and authenticity.
In a world where the wealth gap is increasingly apparent, phenomena like this are more relevant than ever. “For the rich, art is not valuable because of its aesthetic appeal, nor the feelings it invokes. It is valuable because it signals and communicates an aura of superiority”. Simply by owning something exclusive which costs a lot of money, wealthy individuals derive the same feeling as someone who owns a rare trading card among the “card trading” community. Which essentially strips the art itself of any meaning and renders it as useless as “trading cards for the rich”.
“It’s not a raffle”. This peculiar stunt essentially strips the piece of its provenance and “artificial authenticity”. If you enjoy the art more than you care about the certificate which “allegedly proves” its originality, this is for you. “All the plates are equally by Picasso and at the same time, not by Picasso”. There is just no way of knowing if you have the original, which is the whole point of this endeavor.
The group of three will be selling the original, among the replicas, on a single day later this year. Those who join the mail list on their website might have a chance to get one. With every participant being a knowing party in agreement to the terms of a piece of questionable validity, it is a win-win situation for everyone involved.
The whole stunt is now, in a way, a piece of art itself; an ode to the way people in the art world, especially collectors, think about art altogether.
