A New York collective sells a thousand Warhols for $250 each... but only one is the original<

With this juicy operation, the American collective MSCHF intends to criticize the concepts of authenticity and exclusivity that predominate in the art market.

The New York collective MSCHF - which made a name for itself in the spring with the "satanic" sneakers containing a drop of blood launched in partnership with star rapper Little Nas X - did it again this week. He sold a thousand copies of a drawing by Andy Warhol, in which they said the original was slipped, billed at the same price as the others. On a website called the Museum of Counterfeiting, the collective claims to have bought a 1954 drawing (ink on paper) of the master of pop art, Fairies (Fairies), which he estimates at 20,000 dollars, having produced 999 exact replicas of it and having mixed the original with the fakes, claiming to no longer know now where is "the good" Warhol.

"Perhaps a real copy of Andy Warhol"

On sale Monday, October 25, the thousand copies of what MSCHF considers to be a new work - titled "Maybe a real copy of Andy Warhol's fairies" - "were all sold the same day" 250 dollars each, says the collective.MSCHF (pronounced "Mischief", mischief in English) posted a video showing the technique used: a robotic arm to copy the drawing, a process of "artificial aging" using light and heat, then the manual reproduction of the Warhol foundation seal and pencil annotations.

Objective: to make the original as counterfeit as the copy

"If an (art) curator were able to inspect each drawing side by side, they would eventually find the original, but that scenario is unlikely to happen," Kevin Wiesner told AFP. one of the members of the collective. Beyond a juicy financial operation, the total sales amounting to 250,000 dollars, MSCHF claims to want to criticize the concepts of "authenticity" and "exclusivity" which predominate in the art market. "By making mass copies, we erase the provenance trail of the work. Although physically intact, we destroy any future confidence in the veracity of the work" and "we return the original as counterfeit as one of our copies", writes MSCHF on the site of its Counterfeit Museum. Contacted by AFP, the Warhol Foundation did not immediately react.

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