Real Salvator Mundi LLC, announces sale of Mundicoin, its signature cryptocurrency/artwork, to Amundi Asset Management, Europe's largest asset management company and in the top 10 worldwide.
Created by artists Elliott Arkin and Marc Lafia in 2017, Mundicoin represents a unique approach
to “using the blockchain to reset the art market’s perception of what a new ephemeral work of
art might be in the age of social and computational media,” according to Artnet art market
analyst Tim Schneider. As both a work of art and cryptocurrency, Mundicoin is “rattling the cage
loudest,” Schneider said.
Arkin and Lafia launched their Mundicoin project following the record-setting sale of Leonardo’s
“Salvator Mundi” for USD$450 million in 2017. The themed currency was introduced via Arkin’s Real
Salvator Mundi, an online store that offers an array of products featuring the public-domain
image of Leonardo’s now-celebrated painting, from t-shirts and panties to playing cards and a
“DIY restoration kit.”
Lafia, a conceptual artist specializing in new technologies and participatory art, immediately saw
the potential for a Salvator Mundi-themed blockchain artwork. The Mundicoin “is an artwork
that is its own value,” Lafia said, “able to transcend the art world’s closed system.”
Soon after Arkin and Lafia initiated the Mundicoin project, leading blockchain developers like
crypto thinker and consultant Daniel Coffen and other financial investors in the blockchain
space expressed interest in potential partnerships that could indeed galvanize continued
dialogues on value creation and the issuance of fiat currency.
According to Arkin, “Marc and I quickly realized that growing a cryptocurrency to the potential
as a valuable financial and art vehicle that Mundicoin presented could be best facilitated by
handing the reins over to a powerhouse company like Amundi Asset Management. With its
enormous monetary expertise, the firm is exactly what is needed to actualize the project
beyond our wildest dreams. The sale will now allow Marc to continue developing new
computational platforms, while I can focus on developing the Salvator Mundi brand plus.”
Arkin concluded, "Selling Mundicoin to Amundi at this time has left us with a feeling of great
success as artists." Lafia added, "We wish Amundi Asset Management the best in the future
with Mundicoin and hope they are able to grow its value to beyond the Leonardo painting from
which it was inspired.
Arkin has trademarked Salvator Mundi in several different trademark classes thus owning the "brand" and will belaunching new products this Fall. Meanwhile, he and Lafia are considering other art
cryptocurrencies (after a period to not compete with Mundicoin) and participatory arts projects
in the future. Although the terms and conditions of the Mundicoin sale are under a
confidentiality clause in the agreement, the artists are free to re-enter the crypto field as long
as any future works do not cause any confusion with Mundicoin or Amundi Asset Management.
For More Information Email: RealSalvatorMundi@gmail.com phone: 1-929-365-9680
reference:
artnet
newslink
Real Salvator Mundi is the nom de guerre project of artist Elliott Arkin. Created on
November 17, 2017, two days after the historic auctioning of the painting attributed to the
Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci for just over $450 million dollars. Real Salvator Mundi is
a work of art, a conceptual practice in the exploration of value and worth. Real Salvator Mundi
creates Salvator Mundi (TM) products inspired by and as a lasting reflection on the Salvator
Mundi story.
Arkin's work has been exhibited widely throughout the US and Europe and is included in the
permanent collections of museums such as the Louvre’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris,
MAMAC museum in Nice, the New York Public Library and the New York Historical Society, The
Flint Institute of the Arts in Michigan and Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. In 2014,
Arkin's work was the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art (MAMAC) in Nice, France.
website
Museum
Amundi Asset Management is a French asset management company. With 1,653 trillion
euros of assets under management (AUM) at the end of 2019, it is the largest asset manager in
Europe and one of the 10 biggest investment managers by AUM in the world.
Founded on January 1, 2010, the company is the result of the merger between the asset
management activities of Crédit Agricole (Crédit Agricole Asset Management, CAAM) and
Société Générale (Société Générale Asset Management, SGAM).Amundi Group has been listed
on the Euronext stock exchange since November 2015. In legal terms, Amundi Group owns
Amundi Asset Management, as well as several other subsidiaries in the asset management
sector, notably CPR Asset Management (CPR AM)[ and BFT Investment Managers (BFT IM) in
France. In 2016, Amundi Group announced the acquisition of Pioneer Investments, UniCredit's
asset management subsidiary.[7] The two entities merged in 2017.
Amundi is involved in a range of investment management activities
Marc Lafia is an American artist and filmmaker whose work emerges with network culture as
it changes our relationship to knowledge, ourselves, our memories, and our bodies, from one of
representation to presentation, and from contemplation to new modes of embodiment,
producing new subjectivities and new ways of going in the world. He has been exhibited at the
Walker Art Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Tate Online, the ZKM, the Centre
Pompidou, Anthology Film Archives, International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Minsheng
Museum of Art in Shanghai, The Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale 2014 and again at the Whitney
2018. He has taught at Stanford University, the San Francisco Art Institute, Art Center College of
Design in Pasadena, Pratt Institute and Columbia University. His books Image Photograph
(2015) and Everyday Cinema (2017) are published by punctum.
