Chinese contemporary artist Yue Minjun drops first NFTs with market crashing. Is it a joke? ‘Premium quality NFTs are different,’ he says, and an art collector agrees

Contemporary artist Yue Minjun’s collection of 1,200 NFTs, called ‘Kingdom of the Laughing Man’, drops on August 8 at a time when the token market is crashing

So are they a joke? An economist says NFTs ‘never made sense’, but Yue says his have long-term value, and a major Chinese collector says art NFTs are different

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Chinese artist Yue Minjun posing in front of one of his “Laughing Man” paintings. His alter ego features in a collection of NFTs that are launching with the digital token market crashing, but he says his will have long-term value. Photo: Michelle Yue

Published: 12:23pm, 8 Aug 2023Updated: 12:27pm, 8 Aug 2023

Yue Minjun, one of the biggest stars of the vibrant, post-1989 Chinese contemporary art scene, is launching his famous alter ego – the Laughing Man – as a collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

The 61-year-old, who lives in Beijing, tells the Post he is excited to use artificial intelligence to revisit his work in digital form and release products using blockchain technology, which helps authenticate each NFT and gives it value.

It is “a pure utopian world where my creativity can be boundless”, he says.

The August 8 drop of tokens on the LiveArt digital platform, titled “Kingdom of the Laughing Man”, features 1,200 unique pictures that borrow the commercial model of some the most successful NFT collections ever sold, such as CryptoPunks and the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).

One of 1,200 NFT artworks based on Chinese artist Yue Minjun’s “Laughing Man” self-portraits being launched on August 8. Photo: Yue Minjun

The relatively modest starting price of 0.35 Ethereum (worth US$639 as of August 8) is a world away from the record price for a CryptoPunk token, set in 2022, of 8,000 Ethereum (worth US$23.8 million at the time).