The Artist Rights Society, an organization that helps artists with copyright and licensing, is putting out a new Web3 platform. It will open on September 9 with a number of Frank Stella’s NFTs under the name Arsnl.
Stella may be best known for his sparse paintings from the 1950s and 1960s, which are seen as forerunners of the Minimalist art movement. But the 86-year-old artist has used computers and 3D printing to make complex sculptures in the past. Katarina Feder, vice president of ARS and creator of Arnsl, said that NFTs were “the inevitable next step.”
Stella has been a part of ARS ever since Theodore Feder started it in 1987. ARS now represents the intellectual property rights of more than 100,000 artists. It also helps with copyright and licensing and promotes resale income for artists.
Stella has spent her whole life fighting for the resale rights of artists. She worked with Theodore Feder to pass the American Royalties Too (ART) Act and has even talked to law students about the issue. So, he saw the benefit of NFTs, which give artists automatic royalties when their work is sold again.
Stella wrote in an email to ARTnews, “NFTs are fun. “We can build in resale rights; that’s something we’ve worked, rather fruitlessly, on for decades. It will be wonderful if technology can give us what the government never would.”
As soon as Feder sent out an email asking ARS artists if they wanted to be a part of Arsnl, Stella’s team got in touch with him. Stella and ARS began working on the “Geometries” series together. The 22 NFTs that came out of this are slim, gray 3D sculptures, some of which are new Stella designs. The Geometries XXI (2022) NFT was definitely inspired by Stella’s Fat 12 Point Carbon Fiber Star (2016), a spheroid sculpture with 12 points. Each NFT in the series will be sold for $1,000 on the Arsnl website.
The NFTs come with an interesting extra: instructions for 3D printing that only the owners can use to make their own Stella sculpture. They can be bought in sets of 100. Stella says that 3D printing makes it possible to make as many copies as you want.
“It’s an affordable and flexible way to own a Stella,” said Feder. “If you want to spend $100 printing a small one for your desk of $100,000 printing it large for your lawn, you can do that.”
Stella chose to work with Arsnl because he thinks that, since the website is connected to ARS, it would be especially good at helping artists.
“ARS has always been a really strong advocate for its members, and Arsnl is the same,” said Stella. “As a reflection of that, they’re very good about making sure that it’s the artist, not the platform, who comes out on top.”
Compared to other NFT platforms, Arsnl’s charge is pretty high. The main sale of an NFT sold on their platform comes with a one-time charge of 25%. On NFT markets like OpenSea or SuperRare, where fees range from 2.5% to 15%, costs are much lower.
The 10 percent resale royalties that Arsnl requires are similar to what other markets offer. In contrast, a press release from Arsnl says that the company’s fee includes “technical and legal expertise to help museums and corporations navigate the complex processes of NFT minting, promotion, and licensing of artists’ intellectual property on the blockchain and in digital spaces.”
Feder also said, “We’ve seen a few markets start to help in this area over the past year.”
“This past year we’ve seen a few marketplaces begin to offer some aid in this department,” Feder said. “But for us, we have 35 years of licensing experience, real experience helping artists. I think that’s a unique position.”
