WORLD OF WOMEN (EST.2021)
Please note for tax purposes, including potential … Read more
WORLD OF WOMEN (EST. 2021)

Woman #5672

Details
WORLD OF WOMEN (EST. 2021)
Woman #5672
smart contract address: 0xe785E82358879F061BC3dcAC6f0444462D4b5330
wallet address: 0xc9b6321dc216d91e626e9baa61b06b0e4d55bdb1
token ID: 5672
800x800 pixels unlockable to 4000x4000 pixels

Minted on 28 July 2021

Red Turquoise Background (914 Women have this trait); Tuxedo Clothes (100 Women have this trait); Triple Ring Earrings (823 Women have this trait); Blue Eye Roll (440 Women have this trait); Sunset Facial Features (297 Women have this trait); Bob Hairstyle (653 Women have this trait); Surprised Mouth (1,733 Women have this trait); Night Goddess Skin Tone (85 Women have this trait); Passion Red Lips Color (3,008 Women have this trait).
Provenance
0xe5f3941693bbfe4904d424104b7102e07f8bdc47
0x398854e76b044a11ce48f771b47c916fa9bbf5b9
0x60902f364540c0870b9b64957d1e23622756b198
Acquired from the above by the present owner.


Special notice
Please note for tax purposes, including potential sales tax, NFTs may be considered a digital service or digital product and thus Christie’s may be required to collect relevant taxes dependent on local laws. For tax rate information, you may wish to consult an independent tax advisor. Please note, except in the event you are a resident of Mainland China, you may elect to make payment of the purchase price for this lot in the cryptocurrency Ether or Bitcoin. Payment in Ether or Bitcoin must be made to Christie’s via a digital wallet maintained with one of the following: Coinbase Custody Trust; Coinbase, Inc.; Fidelity Digital Assets Services, LLC; Gemini Trust Company, LLC; Gemini Europe Limited; Gemini Europe Services Limited; Paxos Trust Company, LLC; Digivault Limited; Ziglu Limited; or Archax Ltd. Only payments sent from digital wallets maintained at these platforms will be credited towards this lot purchase, and we will not recognise payments from digital wallets hosted at other exchanges or self-hosted wallets. The digital wallet must be registered to you, or, if you registered to bid as a company, then in the name of the company. You agree, upon our request, to provide documentation confirming that the payment was made from a digital wallet registered in your name and maintained at one of the platforms listed above. Partial payments of a lot from multiple digital wallets will not be allowed. The cryptocurrency amount will be calculated by us based on the following: - For Ether: the USD/ETH hourly quoted CoinDesk Ether Price Index (ETX) at the start time of the auction. The USD/ETH rate will then be converted into GBP/ETH using the GBP/USD exchange rate provided by our bank at the same time as the ETH/USD is quoted; or - For Bitcoin: the USD/BTC hourly quoted CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (XTX) at the start time of the auction. The USD/BTC rate will then be converted into GBP/BTC using the GBP/USD exchange rate provided by our bank at the same time as the BTC/USD is quoted. You must pay the purchase price no later than 24 hours after we issue you with an invoice if you elect to pay for this lot in Ether or Bitcoin, or by the end of the seventh calendar day following the auction for all other currencies. The relevant exchange rates will be disclosed in the invoice. For further information and to view our Buyer’s Premium rates, please view the Conditions of Sale via the link below.
Further details
Prior to bidding please ensure you review both the Christie’s Conditions of Sale and the World of Women digital ownership assignment agreement which can be found at the back of the catalogue or available here (https://worldofwomen.mypinata.cloud/ipfs/QmYccLQNUyDD4p7tqdQ9iCcJgiejxUKqWt2FypkVygorLu)

Brought to you by

Keith Gill
Keith Gill Vice-Chairman, 20th and 21st Century Art, Europe

Lot Essay

Noah Davis, Head of Digital Art at Christie’s, discusses World of Women

There is a 1907 painting by the German artist Paula Modersohn-Becker in the MoMA which I believe is one of the greatest self-portraits of all time. The picture is modest in scale, the size and shape of a small narrow mirror, and depicts the artist in three-quarter profile with her left hand raised, gently grasping a pair of dusty-pink flowers. The great source of this painting’s pathos, however, is only subtly obvious: the subject’s right hand rests on her pregnant belly, making it one of the earliest self-portraits painted by a pregnant woman (the artist famously painted an imagined nude self-portrait of her pregnancy the year before, in 1906). Deeply serene, with earthy colors and thickly applied impasto, the composition is refined to impeccably balanced essentials. The subject’s intense gaze is reminiscent of the Renaissance, heavy-lidded and celestial, and yet the painting is strikingly modern, radiating a radical, empowering vibe. Representation in oil painting has always been fraught: while women have classically featured as the subjects of portraiture since the very birth of image-making, the authors of those images were for a very long time nearly exclusively male. Indeed, the first few centuries of painted women constitutes a pantheon of practically nothing but Madonnas or the occasional queens regnant. It wasn’t until the relatively recent past that women began taking overt control of their representation in art (and beyond). The spartan Self-Portrait with Two Flowers in Her Raised Left Hand is, essentially, the twentieth century’s first great visual precursor to Feminism.

Fast-forward to today: the NFT, our shiniest new toy, has taken pop-culture by storm, captivating and/or disrupting all manner of industry from fashion and real estate to art. Thanks to advancements in blockchain technology and decentralized applications, ephemeral goods—especially digital ones—finally have currency. NFT-detractors will make the ‘right-click-save’ argument, but this betrays their fundamental misunderstanding of the new technology at play; they are still appraising the digital image as nothing more than a JPEG, whereas now the JPEG is only a visual representation of an indelible entry on a public decentralized ledger … it’s worth underscoring the staggering cultural implications of this difference. Formerly unprofitable or even nonexistent art collecting categories are suddenly, explosively on the rise. One of the latter few is the astoundingly popular ‘pfp,’ or profile picture, the origins of which can be traced back to the genesis of social media in the early aughts. Over the last few decades, as Myspace begat Facebook and Facebook begat Instagram, users have been faced with an increasingly important decision: what do I use for my profile picture? Now, your reaction to the following statement will be highly influenced by the era in which you grew up, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that choosing a pfp is the contemporary equivalent of painting a self-portrait, especially in the age of NFTs. But, not unlike the cultural moment in which Modersohn-Becker painted her self-portrait, we are in the midst of a familiar dilemma of representation.

Various emerging reports on the NFT space concur that women are woefully underrepresented, whether as collectors, developers, community managers, artists or project founders. The vast majority of profits in NFTs—of which there are plenty—are enjoyed by men, and usually young white men. This isn’t a sustainable paradigm for the nascent world of Web3 (blockchain-enhanced Internet), nor is it an acceptable one, even in the short term. To that end, I am proud to feature the present lot as the sole NFT in our prestigious London Evening Sale of 20th/21st Century Art: Woman #5672, from the pioneering pfp project World of Women, or WoW for short. Aesthetically, Woman #5672 is a straight-on, square-format avatar of a female-presenting subject with a black bob haircut and triple gold rings in each ear; she’s glamorous in a tuxedo with painted red lips and winged eye makeup and most strikingly, her skin is a cool gradient of night sky purple, with a spray of stars where freckles might be. This last trait, ‘Night Goddess,’ is one of the rarest in the 10k-piece collection, and is only slightly more scarce than the aforementioned ‘Tuxedo’ trait, making Woman #5672 one of the most unique WoWs out there. The ethereal skin tone combined with her crisp formal attire imbues her with the mystique of a René Magritte portrait, magnifying her powerful, otherworldly energy against a backdrop of swirling red and turquoise curves. Notably, WoW token-holders elected Woman #5672 in a vote to represent the WoW collection’s marquee auction debut. This is the first time a collecting community has chosen the artwork to be placed in a Christie’s Evening Sale via decentralized vote, and it’s a perfect evocation of the WoW ethos, built on inclusivity, mutual respect and empowerment.

World of Women was co-founded by the artist Yam Karkai, her husband Raphaël Malavieille, Toomaie and BBA (pseudonyms, of course) in 2021. Together, along with a passionate team of likeminded developers and community builders, they have launched a truly global brand, with the mission of amplifying women’s creative voices and bringing increased equity to underrepresented groups in Web3. Since the initial launch date of 27 July 2021, the 10,000-piece WoW collection has been distributed to more than 5,000 owners and has reached a lofty floor price above 10 ETH (~$30,000 as of this writing). In a testament to the project’s stated goals, the WoW team recently chose to relinquish the NFTs’ underlying intellectual property to their corresponding collectors, imbuing even the tokens themselves with a poetic sort of sovereignty. May the enduring brands of the Web3 era strive to promote this kind of generosity to their communities—and by extension, the audience at large, too. And may the sale of this incredibly special NFT signal to all creative women across the globe that your vision is relevant, valuable and unique. The time is now; the time is WoW.

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