British artists are unhappy that their Art Wars work has been sold for $ 6.7 million in NFTs on the OpenSea platform without their consent.
Photographer David Bailey and sculptor Anish Kapoor claim that curator Ben Moore posted their artwork on the OpenSea marketplace as non-fungible tokens earlier this month.
We are talking about the collection of stormtrooper helmets from “Star Wars”, owned by the Art Wars project, and on which more than 300 designers have worked. The collection of helmets became famous after an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2013. Investors have already paid around £ 5m for 1,138 NFTs with images of these helmets.
Moore’s attempts to photograph the collection and turn them into collectible tokens angered many artists working on the Art Wars project. However, Moore said he sent them an email notification on November 4, telling them that their work would be submitted in NFT form. About 12 performers intend to sue Moore. One of them is Helen Downie, aka Unskilled Worker.
“If the benefit of the intellectual property of artists is not challenged, this behavior will destroy and distort the fascinating world of artists and collectors,” Downey said.
The Society for the Protection of the Copyright of Designers and Artists commented on the situation, stating that launching NFT without the permission of the authors could destroy creativity. Therefore, the Society emphasized the need to protect their intellectual property through laws.
This week, NFT Art Wars was removed from the OpenSea platform following a copyright infringement notice. The works of the British artist Damien Hirst could also have been submitted as an NFT, but were removed from the platform at the request of Hirst’s representatives.
A similar situation recently happened with Miramax. She is suing director Quentin Tarantino for intending to launch an NFT collection with scenes from the movie Pulp Fiction, despite the company’s ban.
