The first was a mariachi band, flame juggling dancers, and models in bathing suits and ball gowns strolling by the pool of a Miami mansion.
Then the spectacle began.
A businessman who made his fortune on a wave of speculation — riding the dot-com boom of the 1990s and the rapid growth of Bitcoin in recent years — frames he foretold as pages from Frida Kahlo’s personal diary. A picture popped out of it. .
Wearing a sequined blazer with the artist’s portrait on the back, he secured the painting to a martini glass filled with blue rubbing alcohol.
Captured in a promotional video, attendees at the lavish July gathering “transformed drawings to live forever in the digital realm” through the rebirth of timeless works and the creation of irreplaceable tokens that represent immortality. Those who chose to purchase NFTs with the Ethereum cryptocurrency were promised exclusive access to the event and a guarantee that 30% of the proceeds would go to charity. .
But businessman Martin Mobarak’s foray into the dark world of NFTs has resulted in incredible headlines, investigations by Mexican authorities and the designation of Kahlo’s work as a National Historic Site. I was. Some observers suspected that relatively unknown collectors might have access to Kahlo’s rare paintings, leading to accusations of fraud.
The destruction of “Fantasmones Siniestros” (“Sinister Ghosts”) is an example of a common risk brink in the NFT market, which has been pushed to extremes with trading volumes down 97%. The sale of cryptocurrencies and blockchain assets often relies on cycles of hype, and Mobarak admitted he aimed to stir up controversy.
“We had to do something drastic to get attention,” he said in a broader interview about the project, which was under the radar until Mexico announced its investigation in late September. .
After burning the artwork, Mobarak’s Frida.NFT company created 10,000 non-fungible tokens of the artwork. But according to Etherscan, only four of her NFTs have been sold, and Mobarak personally valued her $10 million piece at a steep discount of less than $11,200. Some were even sold.
“From one angle, Frida.NFT is a brazen scam,” Ben Davis, who produced a frame-by-frame analysis of Mobarak’s party in Miami for Artnet News, said in an email. I don’t know.”
Mobarak said selling virtual copies of Kahlo’s paintings, which feature surreal parades of animal-like monsters, democratizes access to what was kept in vaults. rice field.
What you need to know about NFTs
What are NFTs? A non-fungible token (NFT) is a digital asset that establishes authenticity and ownership and can be verified on a blockchain network. It’s a way to claim ownership of your digital files, comparable to the certificate of authenticity you get when you buy a sculpture.
“If Frida Kahlo were alive today, I would bet for the rest of my life that if I asked her to burn a small piece of her diary to bring smiles and better lives to her children, she would say, ‘And that I will light the fire.”
The craze around NFTs has subsided since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but NFTs continued to attract a small group of artists, investors and hucksters at a time when people were looking for new ways to spend their money. ing.
Unlike tangible collectibles like baseball cards, NFTs, which publicly track ownership and use the blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, pay a portion of each sale on the secondary market. can be provided to the author. Both Basquiat and boring Ape are worth the price they both agree on.
Destroying an artist’s work in the name of cryptography is not unprecedented. Last year, the original Banksy was burned during a livestream before his NFT representing the artwork was sold for his $380,000. Damien Hirst also burned millions of dollars worth of art for his “currency” project. For this project, the collector was forced to decide whether to keep the physical version of his paintings or the digital version of him.
But NFTs are a relatively new field for Mobarak, 57, a Mexican businessman living in Miami. His First Major Business His venture was born in the 1990s during the heyday of his web enterprise. The dotcom was the first Internet service in the Anchorage area before his bubble burst. After selling one of his providers, he reinvented himself as an aircraft tycoon, then interested in exploration I had A potential silver mine in Mexico was never profitable, Bitcoin did.
Mobarak said he used some of the money to purchase Kahlo’s painting from a private collector in 2015, but declined to say how much he spent or from whom. A provenance report commissioned by Mobarak by Andrés Siegel, an art and antiques dealer in Mexico City, shows that a private collector previously purchased the work from a Manhattan gallery called Mary Ann Martin Fine Art. said that he did
Martin confirmed to the New York Times that the heiress of Venezuelan art critic Juan Rol has twice sold works received as gifts from Kahlo. She first sold it to the Vergel Foundation in her 2004, and after being commissioned by the foundation in 2013, she sold it to a private collector. It was then part of an exhibition that toured cultural institutions such as the High Her Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Scuderiedel Her Quirinale in Rome.
Martin said he could not identify the private collector or verify the authenticity of the painting Mobarak burned in Miami.
According to a copy of the provenance report posted on the Frida.NFT website, the painting, which measures approximately 9 by 6 inches, was created around 1945 in watercolor, crayon, pencil, pen, and sepia ink. “The work corresponds to the style and material characteristics that Frida Kahlo used in her diary at La Casa Azul in Coyoacan, Mexico,” Siegel writes. She didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Market value is difficult to assess as the artist’s work rarely goes up for auction, but Kahlo completed some 150 paintings and numerous drawings before he died at the age of 47.
Mobarak could face legal repercussions if the artwork is truly authentic. Mexico’s main cultural institution, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, confirmed the investigation but did not comment further. constitutes a crime in terms of federal law on monuments and zones,” the government said in a September statement.
Gregorio Luke, a former Mexican diplomat and former director of the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California, faces up to 10 years in prison and costs for the artwork for breaking Mexico’s monument laws. “I think this man should be in jail,” he said.
Leila Aminedre, a lawyer specializing in arts and cultural heritage law, said Mobarak faces legal challenges while Mexico has not enforced cultural heritage laws to destroy Kahlo’s works of art. said.
“If he actually burns it, he’s breaking one law,” she said. It could have been against the law.
Mobarak, who claims Kahlo’s painting is genuine, said he did not consult a lawyer before deciding to burn the work. Last year, an auction at Sotheby’s made headlines, with Kahlo’s one of his last self-portraits reaching $34.9 million, making him the most expensive Latin American work of art ever sold at auction. He came up with this idea after noticing
Gabriel Perich said he helped plan the night for his event in Miami in July with two weeks’ notice. He said he wanted the burning to be something of an “ice bucket challenge, but with fire.”
Still, it may be Mobarak’s reputation that was sung. When asked if he wished he hadn’t burned Kahlo’s artwork, he paused for a long time and sighed. “I would like to say that I do not regret it.”
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