“Arrow” actress Katie Cassidy is taking the art world by storm with a series of digital nude artworks —where she is seen naked and covered in black and white paint.
Following her divorce and the end of her hit CW show, Cassidy is the first celebrity to put nude artwork of herself on the rapidly emerging NFT digital art market.
The 34-year-old actress — who is the daughter of the late “Partridge Family” star David Cassidy — is auctioning the photos of herself, shot by celebrity photographers The Riker Brothers, on NFT marketplace Opensea.ie at a starting price of $18,000 per image.
Her collection, called “ME. SHE. WE.,” is dedicated to empowering women and describe how she learned to love herself again following divorce and the end of “Arrow.”
Cassidy — who filed for divorce from Matthew Rodgers last year after two years of marriage — told Page Six, “After a year of quarantine, getting divorced and coming off a show for 8 years, I was forced to learn how to love myself and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.
“I’ve never been happier and I encourage all women to prioritize themselves and learn how to love themselves first and foremost.
“You can’t love other people until you learn how to love yourself. It’s not always easy to look inward and it can be a hard journey, but it’s so fulfilling and empowering.”
The listing for Cassidy’s artwork on Opensea states, “Using black and white paint, a cotton canvas, and the human body as her medium, Cassidy has created a new genre of art, shot by celebrity photographers Drew and Derek Riker.
“Setting the tone for Cassidy’s self-love practice, she throws caution and coupledom to the wind and finds that loving herself at 34 years old is what empowers her existence.
“This provocative photograph of Katie Cassidy reveals her bare skin adorned in paint. The tattoo on her back reads, ‘She flies with her own wings’ in Latin.”
The artworld is buzzing about NFTs, artworks bundled with nonfungible tokens (NFTs), which are digital certificates of authenticity. These tokens allow for the trading and tracking of digital works that exist only on screens.
Earlier this month, a $69 million sale of digital artwork by the artist Beeple at Christie’s reverberated through the traditional art world.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Sotheby plans to join the NFT fray in April by selling artist Pak’s NFT works and allowing bidders to pay using digital currencies, a first for the house.
The WSJ quoted Marc Glimcher, president, and chief executive of Pace Gallery, who “likened the atmosphere to a gold rush, saying he’s fielding 25 calls a day from longtime art collectors as well as newcomer cryptocurrency investors angling to get in on the NFT art craze.”
Guillaume Cerutti, the CEO of Christie’s, added, “You can’t imagine how many people are curious … like we just discovered an unknown continent.”
