The fax art David Hockney created in 1988 was the NFT art we know today!
David Hockney, whose work “Portrait of an Artist – Pool and Two Figures” was sold at Christie’s, a major auction house, on November 15, 2018, for 10.2 billion yen ($90,312,500), the highest price ever paid by a living artist. -(Portrait of an Artist – Pool with Two Figures, 1972), a contemporary artist.
He later lost the No. 1 spot to Jeff Koons in 2013, but still holds the No. 2 spot on the all-time list.
It seems that back in 1988, Mr. Naoki Sakai used to visit Baja California along the Mexican coast with his LA friends Steve Samioff, Mick Haggerty, and Dudley Dizonia. One of those playmates was Hockney!
Couldn’t Hockney send art by fax at that time? and sent many rolls of faxed art to Steve’s home as an experiment.
The idea was conceived as an attempt to send a painting directly from Hockney to the home of the collector who ordered the art. This was more than 10 years before the Internet became widespread.
The problem was that fax machines at the time used thermal paper, which did not prevent paper deterioration, and records of communications alone were not enough to prove authenticity.
David Hockney’s 1988 attempt would have been amazing if it had happened 30 years later in the NFT art era. Perhaps Hockney, who loves new things, would still do it today at the age of 84.
And now, Mr. Naoki Sakai has donated this work, which is very valuable in the history of art, to the Speedy Gallery in Los Angeles.
I will put an NFT-ized IC chip on this piece and show it off to the world by the end of the year.
Thank you so much!
