NEW YORK, NY.- Marking another significant moment for the growing market for NFTs and digital art, Christie’s sale of Andy Warhol: Machine Made on behalf of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts achieved a combined total of $3,377,500. The sale attracted registrants from Asia, Europe and the United States, with near-equal participation from established Christie’s clients who traditionally bid on physical artworks and new registrants from the crypto art community – an important cross-over moment for NFT sales at Christie’s.

Bidding for each of the individual NFTs reached a crescendo in the final moments of the sale, with each lot close extended multiple times to accommodate over 200 bids in the final 24 hours of the sale. Among the successful bidders, three were based in the U.S., one in Europe, and one in Asia.

The sale success again underscores Andy Warhol’s stature as the reigning king of Pop Art, now in both physical and digital-native art forms. Originally created in 1985, Andy Warhol’s ‘Amiga’ drawings were meticulously restored from obsolete floppy disks in 2014. For the Christie’s sale, The Andy Warhol Foundation exclusively minted five unique NFTs that point to restored and preserved files from the 2014 project. Proceeds from this sale, after any appropriate offsets for carbon emissions associated with the minting process, will support the Foundation’s grantmaking initiatives inclusive of its substantial annual funding of The Andy Warhol Museum and its ongoing efforts to support artists throughout the country.

As no other NFTs will be minted from these five individual files, this sale marked a rare opportunity for collectors. Starting bids for each were set at $10,000. Individual prices achieved for each NFT:




• ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Untitled (Self-Portrait)
non-fungible token (tif)
4500 x 6000 pixels
Executed circa 1985 and minted in 2021.
Price realized: $870,000

• ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Untitled (Self-Portrait)
non-fungible token (tif)
4500 x 6000 pixels
Executed circa 1985 and minted in 2021.
Price realized: $562,500

• ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Untitled (Flower)
non-fungible token (tif)
4500 x 6000 pixels
Executed circa 1985 and minted in 2021.
Price realized: $525,000

• ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Untitled (Banana)
non-fungible token (tif)
4500 x 6000 pixels
Executed circa 1985 and minted in 2021.
Price realized: $250,000

Michael Dayton Hermann, Director of Licensing, Marketing, and Sales at The Andy Warhol Foundation, commented: “We are grateful for this opportunity to work with Christie's on making a significant contribution to the Foundation's ongoing efforts to support artists. Warhol's innovative vision and practice continues to enable the Foundation's unwavering commitment to artists by supporting small, community-oriented spaces, major museums, and everything in between."

Noah Davis, Specialist, Post-War & Contemporary Art at Christie’s, added: “We are elated to see such strong results for The Andy Warhol Foundation's historic NFTs. This sale vividly illustrates the bridge Christie's is building between collectors of traditional and digital art. Prominent members of each community joined to propel the bidding, which, due to the robust competition, was extended nearly an hour beyond the published closing time.”

Christie’s May NFT auctions continue, with PROOF OF SOVEREIGNTY, an online auction in collaboration with curator Lady PheOnix, one of the most respected voices in the new media landscape today, open for bidding until June 3. The auction brings together 19 new media artists utilizing groundbreaking blockchain technology and employs metadata, storage and legal standards that have been virtually absent from millions of artworks associated with non-fungible tokens until now. Leading the sale is a historic NFT from the Estate of Nam June Paik, alongside artists including: Jenny Holzer, Urs Fisher, Gucci, Ash Thorp, Auriea Harvey, Jeron Braxton, Kesh, Lans King, Raf Grasserti, GMUNK, Joshua Davis, Gerald Laing, Tamiko Thiel, Claudia Hart, LIA, Marguerite deCourcelle, Josie Bellini, Lethabo Huma, and more.