Is Andy Warhol spinning in his grave because of NFTs?

A digitally drawn Campbell’s soup can by Warhol was sold on May 27th for $1,170,000 as an NFT. Other works from the same auction were sold for between $250,000-$870,000. While it is known that Warhol found the notion of digital worlds and reproductions delightful, we cannot as of yet ascertain whether he is spinning in his grave because of NFTs.

ANDY WARHOL (1928–1987) Untitled Selfportrait / Christie’s/The Andy Warhol Foundation For The Visual Arts, Inc., New York

In the 1980s, Warhol created several paintings using a cream-colored Commodore Amiga computer that took up an entire desk. These digital paintings, which include a pixel-art iteration of his iconic Campbell’s soup cans, were “lost” for 30 years. Computers of that era had a significantly different pixel ratio, differring from the 1:1 square pixels we are accustomed to today. The Amiga’s screen was made up of rectangular pixels at a 5:7 ratio. This meant that the resulting images were somewhat flattened, horizontally, somewhat similar to what happens if you try watching a 4:3 ratio movie on an old school HDTV that does not automatically fix the aspect ratio (a trouble most Gen-Z readers of this article probably never had to navigate).

Digital artist Cory Arcangel, known for his hacking of Super Mario game codes to create artworks that utilize graphic elements of Mario backdrops, met up with the Computer Science department of the Carnegie Mellon University in 2011. Their common goal was to embark upon a digital-archeological journey to sort throughWarhol’s vintage disks and bring his digital artworks back.

This restoration process took about five years, and the resulting images which were 320x200 pixels wide, marginally superior to the original Gameboy, were displayed at the Andy Warhol Museum between 2017–2019.

Last week, Christie’s partnered with the Andy Warhol Foundation and put five of these digital artworks for sale, causing the team that restored the works to protest.

Why?

The pieces sold at Christie’s as NFTs were reconfigured and upscaled, changing the way the flattened pixels created wide images. The new works were miraculously square, changed from the original shape that was a direct result of Amiga technology of the time, and they were also upscaled to be 4500x6000 pixels wide.

ANDY WARHOL (1928–1987) Untitled (Campbell’s Soup Can)/ Christie’s/The Andy Warhol Foundation For The Visual Arts, Inc., NY

One of the wonders of Adobe Photoshop is that if you are dealing with a work that is already made up of discernible, angular pixels, you can use its upscale function to enlarge the work to infinity without losing any fidelity. Photoshop essentially adds additional squares next to the pixel squares it sees, and since each square is a flat color, there is no loss of information when enlarging.

In other words, while an image with different hues and curves might fall apart if you ask Photoshop to imagine it larger, if you have an image made up of parallel geometric shapes, you can print it the size of a photo frame or a billboard.

But to manipulate the works of an artist that were a product of the technology of his time to this degree, does call into question the authenticity of the resulting works. Ironically, NFTs are supposed to be about authenticity. According to the team that restored the Warhol digital artworks, what Christie’s and the Andy Warhol Foundation have put up for sale is too removed from the original artworks to be considered the original drawings. The Foundation’s counter-argument is that the process of digitally correcting these pieces and enlarging them is akin to restoring a historical painting using small brushes.

The Campbell’s soup can Warhol drew digitally was sold for $1,170,000 on May 27th, while other pieces went for between $250,000-$870,000. This could be interpreted as there being buyers out there prepared to buy NFTs of Warhols for the prices of physical Warhols.

While it is known that Warhol found the notion of digital worlds and reproductions delightful, we cannot as of yet ascertain whether he is spinning in his grave because of NFTs.

The Amiga Computer hardware Warhol used / warhol.org