Christie's 2nd BAYC Auction Is Happening This Week. See What Masterpiece Apes Are Being Compared To

Christie’s is auctioning off a laser eye bored ape with its matching M1 and M2 mutants later this week.

Bored Ape #4418 and the primates corresponding M1 and M2 Mutants (18836 and 18837) will be auctioned off during Christies “20th/21st Century: Evening Sale Including Thinking Italian, London event beginning on this Friday, October 15th at 2 p.m. BST or 9 a.m. EST. The auction will be live for four days.

Christie’s estimates the primates will sell for 800,000- 1,200,000 GBP Or $1,087,724- $1,631,586 USD.

Bored Ape #4418 is a four trait brown fur ape with a bored unshaven cigarette mouth and laser eyes. Based on these traits, Bored Ape #4418 is the 35th most rare ape, according to Rarity Tools.

In order to explain the cultural significance and price tag of the BAYC and MAYC lot to Christie’s audience, Christie’s Head of Digital Art, Noah Davis, compared them to the works of a famous 16th century painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Davis specifically referenced a portrait Arcimboldo made of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. In the painting,Arcimboldo depicted one of the most powerful men in the world as veggies and flowers.

“Frankly, it’s an incredibly weird painting; all the more so considering it’s a commissioned portrait of possibly the most powerful person on the planet," Davis wrote in the Bored Ape’s lot essay. “So, why would Rudolf consent to—indeed pay handsomely for—such a transformational interpretation of his image for posterity? Perhaps he didn’t take himself as seriously as most men in positions of power in his time (doubtful) or he admired Arcimboldo’s audacity and expert dexterity as a painter so much that the transformation into a regal veggie-mound was ultimately honorific. Looking at Arcimboldo’s portraiture, I’m reminded fondly of the shimmering excess and madcap mashup at play in Yuga Labs’ most recent project: the MAYC, or Mutant Ape Yacht Club, a collection of surreal, outrageously ugly and yet still somehow peculiarly charming avatars riffing on the original Yuga Labs NFT collection, the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Where Arcimboldo favored fruits and vegetables, the MAYC are overloaded with corrupted and radical traits such as glowing lava rocks, festering fungi, prismatic geological specimens and all manner of oozing sludges. Cute!”

Davis went on to explain that influential people changing their profile photos to mutants is the modern day version of Arcimboldo’s portrait of Rudolf II.

“If you’re having trouble wrapping your brain around why a successful NFT project should be offered in an Evening Sale context alongside other spectacularly expensive, great works of art, imagine in the present day a proxy for Rudolf II changing their Twitter pfp to a newly purchased legendary MAYC and tell me how this hypothetical is any different than commissioning Arcimboldo to paint your portrait as a living pile of fruit ... I will wait.”

The Bored Ape Gazette will continue to follow the Christie’s auction. Be sure to check out the Christie’s listing here: https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-6339106?ldp_breadcrumb=back&intObjectID=6339106&from=salessummary&lid=1#lot-essay