Is Lionel Messi an artist? Plenty of Barcelona, Argentina and Inter Miami fans will tell you that he is. And now you can buy an artwork jointly credited to him at auction.
The piece, Living Memory: Messi – A Goal in Life is credited to Refik Anadol and Lionel Messi and is being listed by Christie’s as an NFT (a non-fungible token), a type of digital work.
The work is an attempt to reconstruct the Argentinian player’s goal in the 2009 Champions League Final, when his Barcelona team beat Manchester United in the Stadio Olimpico in Rome. The finish was a rare headed goal for the 5’ 7” striker, who is renowned for his dazzling footwork.
The work uses AI in a way that Christie’s say ”establishes a benchmark for ethical AI creation”.
And, it can be bought with crypto. Unless you live in mainland China.
This piece is being sold with no estimate at an online-only auction that begins on July 8 and runs until July 22.
The buyer will receive the digital information from the artwork, but not the hardware on which to run it, though the artist will work with them to get the piece installed where they want it.
Refik Anadol is a Turkish-American artist, whose most valuable work thus far is the NFT Machine Hallucinations – Space : Metaverse that was sold for $2.3 million in Hong Kong in 2021.
The work uses multiple cutting edge technologies to create an immersive record of Lionel Messi’s winning goal against Manchester United in the 2009 Champions League Final. Image courtesy of Christie’s.
Earlier this year, artists protested against a Christie’s sale of AI art. The sale went ahead and realised more than $700,000, with the auction house celebrating the arrival of a new generation of art buyers.
Refik Anadol is jointly credited with Lionel Messi for the piece. Image courtesy of Christie’s.
Christie’s aren’t underselling this piece, which they describe as “a hybrid of memory and machine, fact and feeling, it collapses the divide between body and data, between the spectator and the moment itself. It functions as a ‘digital pineal gland,’ a portal between the physical and metaphysical, an emotional interface through which the viewer doesn’t just remember history but inhabits it.”
They add: “The piece transcends the realm of traditional art, transforming an iconic moment in football history into a living, breathing portal. It is not merely a depiction of the past, but a dynamic architecture of feeling, where raw memory becomes an experiential environment.”
