Read on Twitter
1 / Some thoughts on the @beeple sale. We are at a critical junction as the future state of NFTs, the state of art, art ownership and art production heading into the second decade of the 21st century. Many positives, equally some negatives
2 / @beeple's sale on @niftygateway is the most powerful example to date of how NFT's are the most revolutionary invention in art since the advent of Gutenberg's printing press. Not since the Renaissance, over a half a millennia ago, have artists had such control of production.
3 / Printmaking (etching/lithography/screenprinting) is an expensive business, and in the centuries since its advent, the costs of production (and to an extent the deskilling of the artist) required both (expensive) specialist knowledge and investment.
4 / NFTs require none (BEWARE: not all positive)
5 / Due to these cost, prints therefore were only really accessibly to artists with strong, mature markets and capital (or backing). Distribution was owned and managed by middle-men galleries with largely local collector bases.
6 / NFTs change the game. Low cost, globally distributed to anyone with an internet connection, cheap to store, cheap to insure, cheap to transport.
7 / NFTs come at a time when we are seeing a revolutionary democratisation of the art world. With the advent of social media, artists (like @beeple) can build large audiences, especially artists whose works does not meeting the conceptual or aesthetic criteria of the elite galler
8 / It is these artists that will see first the power of NFTs as a site of production for the broader direct to market dissemination of their work. A digital medium for digital audiences.
9 / Remember the primary site of exhibition is online (Instagram / Twitter / News Feeds), these are not artists or creatives who have gallery and museum shows.
10 / Usually their works lends well to the digital medium and aesthetic (ie. no painters) ( @beeple), whose work references some of the principles of crypto ( @beeple) - the collector base is still largely crypto based), and work that is aesthetically led and conceptually light.
11 / The same processes are at play in the art world proper. Artists with large social media are have leverage commercially in their gallery deals. Artists are more nomadic in their relationship with galleries. Management companies are sprouting up sport/music model) as a result.
12 / Venues like @Superblue now cater for high-art,low-cost art experiences think @teamLab_net in a similar model to NFTs. The experiential quality (de-materialisation) of art here is gaining. I fully expect to see artists like @teamLab_net making NFTs soon. They are next.
13 / SO the NUMBERS of @beeples sale are astounding and frightening in equal measure. The problem with big numbers are manifold. But mainly, they distract. People spend more time studying the numbers than they do the art. its easier, more concrete.
14 / Does the sale/work constitute rational value? My personal opinion is no. These are numbers that artists who have all the critical and institutional backing over the course of a 20-30 year career would dream of realising.
15 / The final bid of 777,777 I think typifies the gamification and lack of rational of the bidding. This is spectator bidding for the Twitter-age. It makes NO commercial sense at the height of a 2020 crypto bull run, there is a lot of wealth being generated ATM in the space.
16 / Just FYI, you can build a blue-chip art collection with several Picasso’s for $777,777.
17 / I would suggest that the short viability of these as assets (which they have to be looked at like, at this level) is perhaps at a stretch positive. With the liquidity NFTs bring to the art market maybe that is all that matters. Flipping the hot potato though never, ever last
18 / Value in art is largely a generational accrual and stems from the amount of cultural value is stored in a work of art as it is passed from generation to generation. It is a long term game. NFTs breed artistic shortermism and that is a major problem.
19 / I admire @beeple in lots of ways, but I think the value here is not in the art that has been sold, but how it has been disseminated. When we talk about this sale being historic, we are referencing the ‘sale’ not the art. No one is saying the art is historic...
20 / (largely because it isn’t) and that is where the long-term value is (think Malevich’s Black Square) and where the established fine art market builds long-term cultural value in a way NFT platforms will struggle. @beeples work propose nothing new aesthetically or conceptual
21 / The flip side of this (and its important) is that who gives a fuck about what curators etc think. If a group of people get together globally to decide what has value and what doesn’t, what they like and don’t then to hell with the rest of pomposity.
22 / Thats the beauty of NFTs and their democratising potential.
23 / It is also what art is about - truly, all of a sudden people (real people not curators) can decide and support and build their artist’s markets. Thats decentralised democracy in action, better than we have seen ANYWHERE else in the crypto space.
24 / YET, and there are always some YETS. With the @beeple sale, and specially how it was marketed, boxed and displayed, the relationship between art and NFTs is becoming increasingly fraught. Why? Because NFTs are primarily a commercial medium
25 / They are sellable, low-cost, tradeably, easy to produce on mass (there is no extra labour in making 100 (unlike trad. prints) which means if not properly guarded - they have the danger of resembling products quicker then they can be called art. MORE ON NEXT THREAD
