NFTs (thread now extremely NSFW)

already quoted last week, like any post i make

trivia: i have sneezed like 20 times in the last 2 minutes

beeple is worse than koons, which is really saying something

i feel like this has to be read in the tradition of 'anti-art,' as like a new version of duchamp putting a urinal in the museum, but the gesture means something like the opposite of what it once did.

like, dada and similar movements were attacking the institution of the museum because it represented the system of philanthropy through which the ruling class justified its position. the bourgeoise, back then, wanted people to believe in culture, then. they were threatened by anarchism in art for the same reason they were scared of anarchists in politics, because it was a challenge to their legitimacy.

today it isn't really like that. the uber-rich investor class is aware that they are parasites. the notion that art should mean something, that anything should mean anything, is a threat to them. cynical self-awareness is the posture they like. they love things like warhol's quote that "making lots of money is the best kind of art." to them, this means that everything is just money. money is the most real thing, the only real thing, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a sucker. they like to patronize artists who seem to be saying this in their work.

that's my reading anyway. for a certain kind of financial sociopath, a beeple causes less anxiety than an abstract expressionist painting. the latter represents some kind of ideal -- or tries to -- whereas the former mocks ideals, revels in the grotesque, and maybe feigns at critiquing it but in a way that is self-disavowing anyway so there is no need to worry about it. "art shit for yer facehole."

i think it depends on the role: artist, buyer, or observer. almost everyone is the latter. the art sucks. that's my take. for the artist, it's an attempt to finally cash in on something that has made almost no one money. the most important thing is the buyer, because it's the most vicious. it has nothing to do with the art, or the observer. treeship is right that it's a rebuke to the idea that art should mean anything. it's more than a rebuke, it's an afterthought. who cares what it means? who cares if it means? what's it worth? what will it be worth? that's what it means. that's what high-end "art world" art has been about for a very long time. this is a translation to the mass market of idiot images

y'all on the money, er... no pun intended

i'm anxious about clicking that vanity fair link

i think it's all a useful way to figure out who is a complete douchebag, whether it comes to artist, speculator, or bystander. anywhere i go, within 45 feet of me, fucking sucks. (that's not true - if it were, i would be the perfect NFT artist)

the vanity fair piece was interesting. apparently beeple's work is related to alt right meme culture and early images included in his 'everydays' were often racist. the piece also claims that the people fueling the nft art craze are bitcoin millionaires who got in early and earned their money as a fluke. culturally, they are alt right/edgelord types, not the manhattan elite i was thinking of in my post.

it's all play money in the truest sense

"the art world" is definitely into beeple now, though. they don't have standards beyond what sells.

What if, in the future, you could buy a Baby Yoda puppy, and it knew to play with kids. But then it got screwed up, and it got confused, and the algorithm got messed up, and it started eating kids, and it got stray, and there were these attacks of stray Baby Yoda robots that used to be toys, but they got so much AI in the future that they got loose, and they’re fricking eating kids.

https://news.artnet.com/opinion/beeple-everydays-review-1951656

this is pretty good. elements of the art press isn't having it. good for them.

yeah, a few others tore it to shreds, too. the very first one i saw, though, was this:

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-56368868

So, best to put money aside and consider Everydays: The First 5000 Days as a work of visual art and not as a tradeable commodity/financial investment.

Is it any good?

Yes, is the short answer.

If you're into the comic book aesthetic, which can be traced back decades, then Beeple is a talented exponent of the genre.

It's not too much of a stretch to make a reference to Hieronymus Bosch's 15th Century densely weird masterpieces, or Andy Warhol's Pop Art, or the macabre nature of Philip Guston's surreal, cartoonish paintings of the late 1960s and 70s.

loooooooooool, that take was so awful on the very first day, aged very poorly

lol jesus

"the comic book aesthetic, which can be traced back decades" lol

it's kind of offensive to compare him to guston

bosch is safely distant, warhol was a great artist but he also flirted with the kind of market nihilism that made beeple possible, but guston's late work is a real attempt to capture the grotesque aspect of vietnam-era america. there is outrage behind it and real sadness. it's nothing like beeple's scattershot collection. there is no coherent point of view with beeple.

also, like, what is "the comic book aesthetic"? there are many artists working in different styles in comics.

Hieronymous dosh amirite

The digital art community is basically imploding right now as it has polarized into for and against jumping onto this train. People that knew nothing about this two weeks ago, are now cool with creating dox lists of other artists they think are on the wrong side. It’s pretty distressing.

― Kim, Thursday, March 11, 2021 6:57 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Why is it bad for people to publicly tell other people that their morals suck and that their art does, too? It isn't "doxing" if it's publicly available information, too.

Fuck NFTs. The only thing that's distressing about the situation is that it's just another playground for rich fucks to get more rich, and further evidence that the only art that matters will never actually matter to a market.

http://beeplegenerator.com/

It's not too much of a stretch to make a reference to Hieronymus Bosch's 15th Century densely weird masterpieces,

Actually, it is too much of a stretch ... none of the images used in the article have much "density" to them. If you want to make a reference to a famous painter, Magritte would be closest in terms of "weird" and the lack of density/commercial aesthetic.

or Andy Warhol's Pop Art,

how so? because he is a household name?

or the macabre nature of Philip Guston's surreal, cartoonish paintings of the late 1960s and 70s.

because one of the images selected for this article has a somewhat similar color palette to that period of Guston's?

the warhol comparison has to do with the way he incorporates pop culture symbols. there isn't much similarity in how the two artists use this material though.

it's just a very inept artist. this writer is just itching for the chance to "legitimate" art that the hoi polloi don't "get." they think that is the situation here, elitist gatekeeping. when in actuality what's happened is a total collapse of standards instituted from above, not any kind of democratization.

a lot of those "standards" were kinda problematic tho

Yeah but this isn’t the way to smash them though, that’s my point. The pressure is coming from above here, not below.

is it? where is the pressure coming from? honestly, it's not clear to me. the pressure is coming from crypto people + money. to the degree that you think those two overlap. is that "below", in the sense that they're championing terrible art and don't know what the fuck they're talking about? or is that "above", in the sense that they have money?

and where does christies fall in a scheme like that?

Above/below maybe is a bad way to frame it.

This isn’t an insurgency led by artists. There have been many such movements through the centuries, carried out for different ends. This is something else.

Above/below is too simplistic. It’s more like it’s coming from people who don’t care about art, who are neither reformers nor revolutionaries. It’s just trashing the joint to no real end, and defended using this older language of the avant garde redefining what art means, language that is irrelevent to this moment.

what's been disturbing to me is the realization that to the extent that there is an institutional structure around this thing, it's places like rhizome, and they've been championing blockchain shit for years. and maybe for good reason! it may very well be a way to deal with a longstanding issue with provenance and digital art, cool. but what seems to be happening is that it's just getting co-opted by the crypto world, which is even larger and richer, and the art people kind of...don't give a fuck? some of them? it's very telling, I have to say. i don't know who kim is, upthread, and there are a lot of other people online expressing similar views, but YEAH: it' a fucking turd, y'all

it's that eternal question:eating shit and dying is at some point on the spectrum. at what point is the pain of trying to persist in a world like this greater than the pain of eating shit and dying?

on the spectrum of bliss and searing pain i mean

Christies will learn to justify beeple. Their catalog writers will inscribe him seamlessly into the canon. One day he will have a museum retrospective. The whitney.

Karl aw man I wanna give you a hug and play you some Cocteau Twins rarities, someday man. Go to a park if you can, I know it's like 9 PM in Chicago

reminder: none of this shit works if the magnetic fields flip and kill the grid

stephen merritt just woke up from a cat nap, startled

his iPhone has mysteriously died

it is oddly silent

Above/below is too simplistic. It’s more like it’s coming from people who don’t care about art, who are neither reformers nor revolutionaries. It’s just trashing the joint to no real end, and defended using this older language of the avant garde redefining what art means, language that is irrelevent to this moment.

― treeship., Wednesday, March 24, 2021 6:45 PM (four hours ago)

it's just kinda odd to me ... idk, maybe it's rationalizing me getting out of the "art world" even at the provincial level I was at, but I feel like the fact that art is being sold and speculated on in this way isn't inconsistent with the history of art speculation and sales. Like some legitimate art that is sold is similarly arbitrary in its "artness" ... the difference is the artists who made that art were part of the art world and were playing the game.

Honestly, I think the NFT is going to evolve to be about things more lucrative than "art" tbh. It'll be dumber shit like naming rights for some celebrity child.

I feel like the focus on the art sales via NFT is a result of the fact that Covid has given art writers a lot less to write about, and so this is a bigger thing than it could have been if there were festivals, and fairs, and high concept big budget museum blockbusters ... though it is interesting in the sense that there seems to be more coverage and discussion about this beeple thing than the growing organization and activism of lower level art museum workers around cultural and economic equity vis a vis art institutions' programming and the huge pay discrepancy between executive staff and "star" curators vs. lower level workers who were the ones most financially impacted by museums closing due to covid.

One of the Winklevoss boys spent today arguing with people about the superiority of NFTs and my god there has never been a better argument for a 100% estate tax than someone that stupid being worth ten figures.

I'm really starting to understand how a marginally clever nerd stole a multi-billion company right out from under his nose.

— Respectable Lawyer (@RespectableLaw) March 24, 2021

what's been disturbing to me is the realization that to the extent that there is an institutional structure around this thing, it's places like rhizome, and they've been championing blockchain shit for years. and maybe for good reason! it may very well be a way to deal with a longstanding issue with provenance and digital art, cool. but what seems to be happening is that it's just getting co-opted by the crypto world, which is even larger and richer, and the art people kind of...don't give a fuck? some of them? it's very telling, I have to say. i don't know who kim is, upthread, and there are a lot of other people online expressing similar views, but YEAH: it' a fucking turd, y'all

― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone)

the crypto world and people who are into blockchain shit are the same thing

I feel like the fact that art is being sold and speculated on in this way isn't inconsistent with the history of art speculation and sales. Like some legitimate art that is sold is similarly arbitrary in its "artness" ... the difference is the artists who made that art were part of the art world and were playing the game.

this is a good point -- i have to think about why this bothers me so much.

compare beeple to likelike, something like martin creed's "the light goes on and it goes off." this work is also mischievous, especially when you look at the things he says about it, denying that there is any "deeper significance" and urging viewers to simply enjoy the experience of the light going on and off. it's designed to add humor to the gallery, it's an attention-grabbing thing for the artist, but it doesn't really try to damn art, even if it lightly pokes fun at its pretensions. there is a long history of this kind of thing in art -- work that baffles the public and that curators justify on kind of absurd, guffed up academic grounds. the public dislikes it, but in any case the art world chugs along, a space for display, discourse, debate, whatever. there are many earnest people in that world too, even as there are many cynics.

beeple seems like a new chapter, i guess because he reflects this harsh, reactionary kind of meme aesthetics. the spirit of his work just seems really "off" to me, like if the art world embraces it, they're embracing the worst aspects of themselves.

sorry for all the typos

To clarify my “distress” up thread, what I’m referring to isn’t people going after opportunistic dude bro artists grifting on this - but there were lots of independent, freelance or commercial concept artist types of people, many of them women etc that have been chipping away for years to get become viable in the field, that were just saying things like “what’s all this about, and should I get into it?” and then immediately getting pitchforked and backing away. But the dude bros are still in it and capitalizing like they did before those other people breached their club. That aspect feels shitty and backward.

beeple seems like a new chapter, i guess because he reflects this harsh, reactionary kind of meme aesthetics. the spirit of his work just seems really "off" to me, like if the art world embraces it, they're embracing the worst aspects of themselves.

― treeship., Thursday, March 25, 2021 3:13 AM (five hours ago)

I guess I view the art world as similar to capitalism, in that it will incorporate things of value or perceived importance into itself. It recoups.... Like, after "The Art of the Motorcycle" and all the corporate-sponsored consumer goods-as-art exhibitions, and the expansion of art museums into "design" ... this thing seems consistent. Granted, the museums aren't doing shows like "The Art of Napalm" or "Fascists' Favorite Paintings" ... like, the scope of what is art may be broad, but there are ethics in terms of the exclusion of "bad" things. I guess my question for you is, should this be excluded because it shouldn't be "art" or because it is a "bad thing"?

I’m seeing a lot of conflation of NFTs with digital art by people who seem clueless that institutions like the MoMA have already exhibited digital art for decades.

I think my problem with it is that crypto is larger than the art world, and doesn’t care about the quality of art at all. It’s irrelevant. How much is it worth, though?

The art world already exists within capitalism, of course (as I’ve been reminded by many crypto dude bros. I’m not sure if Kim is referring to me as a dude bro, but yeah, I did check my follows on Twitter to see who was more into crypto than art, then loudly unfollowed a handful of people. But I’m pretty sure no one gives a fuck what I think, not on Twitter, especially not in the art world). But I think NFTs/crypto is different. Because from the very beginning, crypto envelops the artist into the currency. You have to mint it. That’s complicated. You have to have a crypto wallet and all that shit. it’s not that hard, but it takes time to figure out what it’s worth. Then boom! You convince some rich prick to buy your ugly digital art, for which the artist receives ETH. Now the artist has ETH while the rich prick has the art. I imagine the former artist getting way more interested in ETH at this point, making some money, and trading it around, because that’s what it’s for! And of course they will want to spend some of that ETH on some crappy art made by an online friend of theirs that was also conned into the game. Now you’ve got two artists with ETH. It’s more interesting than the art they were making - way more! Only now, their Twitter bio leads off with #NFTartist instead of #artist

Bad post, on my part, but they can’t all be winners.

I guess - imagine trading your art for 400 six flags bux. Or wait, don’t imagine that