NFTs are bringing back contemporary art sales

Art used to be confined to the hushed expanse of a museum, or the walls of an apartment. But it has found an expansive new home today: in the world of crypto.

Contemporary art sales are apparently facing a significant revival with the help of non-fungible tokens — NFTs are a form of cryptocurrency, basically digital collectibles that live on the blockchain. According to Artprice, a leader in art market information, contemporary art auctions hit a peak of $2.7 billion over the past fiscal year of 2020-2021. That's a boost of 117 percent.

This mammoth-like figure is largely due to the digitisation of art, the report says. With the pandemic moving everything online for galleries and art dealers amid tough financial times for the arts, the world's soaring fascination for NFTs saw art sales making a comeback.

Thierry Ehrmann, the CEO of Artprice, called NFTs a "sensational arrival" to the landscape of art.

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Just look at the artists who have joined the NFT game. There's the universally-known Banksy, who sold his work titled Morons. It features the words: "I can't believe you morons actually buy this shit" and sold for $380,000. Don't need to explain the irony here.

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Then there was digital artist Mike Winkelmann, more commonly known as Beeple, who sold an NFT for a whopping $69.3 million. The online auction, held by Christie's, had 22 million people in attendance.

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The digital art phenomenon has catapulted artists like Beeple, while also drawing in a younger generation of art enthusiasts. Christie's, for example, reported that the aforementioned auction mostly brought in buyers under the age of 40. A survey by UBS and Art Economic found that a new sector of millennial collectors are driving digital works, with 12 percent of art sales in the first half of 2021 being purely digital. These millennials are spending the most on art overall — an average of $378,000. This is three times the amount that Gen-X and Boomers do.

So contemporary art sales are back, thanks to the love between young people and blockchain. But if buying these (wildly expensive) pieces aren't your thing, you can always try making an NFT of your own.