What's more interesting is the allegation that this is "tape painting": sold to an accomplice for the purpose of promoting the NFT "art" market.
That's literally how the non-digital art market works, as well.
The quality of being art has some positive correlation with being aesthetically pleasing, and has some negative correlation with being useful for practical purposes, but the determining factor is whether you can reasonably expect other people to consider it art too.
Intersubjective memes have a bootstrap problem (the concept is a supertype of "network effects"). To make something art, you have to make people believe other people believe its art. A way to brute-force this is to get someone to visibly spend large amount of money (or other resources) on it, and proclaim their belief in the value of the thing.
So it's not just the NFT "art" market that's being promoted here; the work itself is being turned into art, and the author into artist.
Though there's a fraction of the non-digital art market that doesn't work like that. For NFTs, I wouldn't be surprised if "painting the tape" was pretty much the whole thing.
It seems like the more conventional term is "painting the tape." Googling for "tape painting" pretty much only gives results about painting with masking tape.
But art critics have started to analyze it, so who knows.
https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beepl...
Some examples are really reaching too: "it’s fun to draw black people" - what is it an example for? What is the article author trying to point out there?
I think that Beeple is basically just a rando-tier DeviantArt/Tumblr artist, and much of his art is cringe to boot. Since someone purportedly paid the equivalent of $69 million in ETH for it, it's noteworthy that there's no there there.
This doesn't convey any property rights to the art's copyright, unless the purchase also included those separately from the NFT, which, of course, happens all of the time without the NFT silliness and doesn't require NFTs at all.
Even picasso was alleged to have told a diner to pay him an absurd amount of money for his napkin sketch - because it took him a few decades to get to draw like he did.
And I think Picasso's artworks are trash.
> I bet someone would buy a preserved notebook of someone semi-famous with 5000 pages of drawings, mostly regardless of contents
...is, I think, kind of what the article author is trying to get at. Beeple is arguably semi-famous not for his art, but for getting a staggering price for these 5000 images. It's as if someone bought a preserved notebook with 5000 pages drawings for tens of millions of dollars, and the notebook belong to someone who is semi-famous because... they sold that notebook for tens of millions of dollars.
While I keep trying to give NFTs a benefit of the doubt -- I think it's great for creators to be paid for their work! -- I'm not convinced that introducing artificial scarcity is the way to go about it, and this sort of "it commanded a high price because it commanded a high price" recursiveness doesn't exactly give us a great example for why NFTs are not a peculiar techno-bubble.
What is the article author trying to point out there?
That is the crux of it - will Beeple be semi-famous in 200 years? Doubtful. There isn't anything here that is particularly noteworthy to stand the test of time... the unique difference in this work is its delivery, not its content. (In that sense, the buyers were correct to not care about the content.)
It does deserve some recognition for being the first of its kind. But just like the videos of people who took a picture of themselves every day for years were once new and innovative, they are now commonplace... so will works like this become commonplace. So the point is that there is no reason to expect this to appreciate in value and become worth a billion dollars.
That the artist is not PC enough, so his art must be valueless and he should probably be cancelled.
This and other comments would seem to blow past the fact that the critique also pans the “pc” political commentary (see also the comment on the George Floyd piece).
Ironically it is people in this thread decrying cancel culture that are refusing to engage with anything that might possibly contradict their politics.
The author is oblivious to the fact that he can't think his way around his pangs of identity guilt. He doesn't realize the mere mention of black people isn't a taboo for most people.
I'd guess he realizes it and that's the point. A lot of his stuff has taboos.
Its like a representation of the artist's whole body of work, ~4000 lower quality sketches progressing into ~1000 in his current style.
I feel like this art critic is not in touch with meme culture. Many of the examples contained were quite striking and interesting, don't find drawings of dicks or naked people particularly shocking or objectionable.
Heck, I'd say his work is more interesting to look at than bowls of fruit and portraits of historical figures.
people are willing to waste untold sums of money to feel sophisticated
<snark> Maybe, if you don't grasp too much of a chaos of a modern world, you just want one piece of art from one artist to contemplate and discuss with your fellow travelers, behind closed doors of your castles. </snark>
None of the items highlighted by this article break that stereotype.
You'd have to have some serious Giger-level shit to make a digital painting involving H. Clinton and Trump remotely interesting in 2021. This is... not that.
>>The name of this game is “number go up.” This is about pumping B20, so holders and Metapurse can benefit when they go to sell the token—i.e., get more ETH, buy more NFTs, rinse, repeat.
First of all, the buyer putting the art up on a digital museum is exactly what you'd expect from someone spending $70 million on an NFT. The author spins it as some scandalous revelation.
Similarly, the buyer selling tokenized shares in their art collections is being cynically spun as nothing more than a "number go up" game, which completely discounts the value this business model could provide, in democraticizing art ownership, enabling art to be more readily used as financial collateral to access liquidity, etc.
So when I read about some NFT crypto art selling for 69 million, I was genuinely surprised that it was at least someone I had heard about before. It’s not exactly my cup of tea, but I respect Beeple’s dedication to his art.
When I read this article, it felt less a critique of the merits of Beeple’s art, and more like a hit piece on their character. Cherry-picked are examples of past artwork likely to offend somebody, somewhere. In my opinion, art critique isn’t that hard, I even wrote about it here, https://wndr.xyz/posts/9fjM1tOJO7MWX4fYw3AU2Q==/what-s-art-a....
This however is not an analysis of the artwork, but a meta-analysis of the subjects of Beeple’s art. If this qualifies someone a National Art Critic, then it probably is “fancy-dancy elite art homo” thinking. But hey, it got people to click and read their article I guess.
Honestly, they could have just posted the images and that would have been condemnation enough. I mean, good for him for making money, but let's not pretend this is interesting art for anyone over fifteen.
Humor is a matter of personal taste. Art isn't craft.
That’s like the core crux of SaaS!
As an older, less tech-savvy gentleman, would you recommend NFT Art as a useful way to launder money?
The cut Christie's takes on my 'transactions' is borderline usurious.
Unless someone has billions and wants to just p*ss away money for laughs, there is no legitimate explanation for buying something like this for such a price. It is not an investment in any reasonable sense of the word.
Can I make a commit for 5000 days in a row then sell the text as an NFT? Probably not as I couldn't gain 2 million InstaZuck followers by creating commits with "trump sucks" and "whoa the future is crazy maaaan" as the description everyday.... or could I?
All the "political" art is lame. That's all future dustbin stuff. It panders to plebs who don't understand how the world really works to pay the bills, boring.
There isn't even any layers of abstraction like some of the animations by Svankmajer have, its just topical Murican dumb shit.
It's like bro art. You know those dudes...
Dude's who have "cool tattoo's" and pride themselves on the kind of micro-brew beer they drink and smoke hand rolled cigars cut with Damascus steel or some shit- those dudes like that kind of art- its embarrassing.
Also the Beeple dude owes the Cinema 4d and Octane render programmers some money- without their engineering his "art" would have remained like those lousy drawings.
If 5000 of those drawings is the requirement for making 70 million all the ten year olds out there are going to be rich.
I really like Ethereum too- makes me feel dirty when I interact with the chain now. We should ask Lord Vitalik to do a hard fork so this shitty art NFT thing never happened.
They can have a new fork for the crappy art- Pabst Blue Eth.
None of his art says anything other than "look at me", but then again he's a "designer". Graphic designers/Mograph artists have nothing to say other than "look at me" They are the narcissists of the art world. They are soulless.
If they had souls, and had something important to say they would make full length narrative works but they don't. They just make stupid faces and do the "hang loose" hands or whatever the fuck that hand thing is that people do when they don't know what to say but are trying to act cool.
They make lots of money though, but that is also boring on its own.
The future is so boring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXrLA_P_q2c
By all means, choose not to like it as an individual...but spouting off some purity test for making and experiencing art is literally the opposite of making and experiencing art, and you sound exactly like the people you’re criticizing.
Also, your point about Cinema 4D is actually embarrassing. I suppose you'd say the same about brush companies being owed a percentage of the same of oil paintings, too? Without the brushes being manufactured the "art" would have remained those lousy images in their heads.
>Dude's who have "cool tattoo's" and pride themselves on the kind of micro-brew beer they drink and smoke hand rolled cigars cut with Damascus steel or some shit- those dudes like that kind of art- its embarrassing. I don't "get" modern art. Everything is ugly and has "deep" meaning in the sense a 16yo would consider deep. And the art crows is too scared to call the artists out. So yeah, I do agree, but it's not just this beeple guy, it's basically the last 50y of art history, give or take.
But then, those young, white, male hipster dudes have money to spend, so why should the art market not cater to them?
Can you, though?
I have good streaks for weeks and months at a time, but 5000 days in a row is fucking impressive in its own right, regardless of the quality.
I thought most of the ,,crappy,, pieces given as example in the article to be at minimum thought-provoking and better than I can create, and pretty hilarious in several cases. At 5000 days in a row, they can,t all be winners, but they are from what I,ve seen.
I think most of the time millions are paid for art it,s shady as fuck, and I don,t know if this one is any different, but the art holds up imo. GP reeks of envy, which is also normal to experience and a valid feeling to have and express.
He’s an Artist. It’s his chosen vector of expression.
Leave him be.
His work will be discussed long after we’ve become worm farmers.
Perhaps, but likely as a footnote to the footnote that was NFT mania, not as an artist in his own right.
I think this “piece” if you will follows that. It’s super controversial because of what it claims as fine art - an NFT of crude imagery in meme form valued at ungodly sums of crypto currency during these days when a large part of the population is desperate for stimulus checks. (Talk about the current human condition in the era of hypermodernity!)
It’s genius. I could also be blowing smoke up my own ass.
I don’t “get it” like I think people 50 years from now will (when the conventional wisdom is it was a radical departure that opened new ground in the stagnant art world - the first hypermodern masterpiece, or whatever the tastemakers of the time decree) but that gives me the advantage, living through it, of seeing this as something completely preposterous, absurd, and “not art!”.
The NFT art movement in general makes you think about what art means and as much as other art movements from worlds ago did to the people of that time.
The content quality of the imagery hardly matters. Sort of. It’s crude, political, cheap, unaffordable, and outrageously offensive to some.
It is us in this time and we hate to see it.
they could have at least put up a png ;)
This is obviously a bad idea for all kinds of reasons, and I would never do it, but once I had the idea it's kinda hard to imagine that someone else is not already doing it. Fun to think about non the less.
Anyway, this art trading stuff seams way easier.
No sign of norms being challenged here.
Surely the author of the article felt that drawing a “black dude” etc was un-woke?
Seems like a giant middle finger to the art world. The backlash speaks volumes too.
“By posting the results online I’m ‘less’ likely to throw down a big pile of ass-shit,” the artist explains of the impetus behind the daily creative exercise on his website, “even though most of the time I still do because I suck ass.”
I understand that art shouldn’t be solely be judged by the medium. It’s just that young artists see this kind of high fidelity output and get the impression that their art must be even worse if this isn’t good enough. IMO the only thing amateur about Beeple is his attitude.
And it's not like I expect someone who's an artist of all people to remain upstanding in all their communications. I'd rather just hope they can keep honing their talents, of whatever subjective skill level.
You might want to read this -> https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beepl...
and this -> https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2021/03/11/nfts-crypto-...
"A new and rapidly growing journalistic “beat” has arisen over the last several years that can best be described as an unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance. It is half adolescent and half malevolent. Its primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power. Though its epicenter is the largest corporate media outlets, it is the very antithesis of journalism."
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-journalistic-tattletale...
What a world.
A Twitter thread explaining how absurd this is: https://twitter.com/jonty/status/1372163423446917122
There's already URL rot going on: https://twitter.com/CheckMyNFT/status/1372253288863825925
It's almost the same idea [0] Galileo used 400 years ago to prove he was first to see Saturn rings by hashing the image description and distributing the hash.
I don't see it. This is 11 years of evolution and development of someone's art, it is cringe because when you don't cherrypick your best work you always end up bad or even cringy but that's also part of the story that this piece tells.
The utility provided by the NFTs is in actually owning the “original”, not that it is not reproducible.
Only the original NFT (which has a unique address) is cautioned by the artist, that's what gives it value.
That sounds... just insane. Content under an URL can and does change. URLs themselves are not even under full control of the seller. I could get signing data itself, but signing a pointer?
EDIT: but the URL contains an IPFS hash, assuming it's not the mutable kind, maybe this is not completely crazy (or at least wouldn't be, if they included just the hash, without the gateway URL part)?
EDIT2: nevermind, I saw your other comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26500542, which links to a Twitter thread that explains the scam in details.
Although as someone working in the same sphere the "Everydays" idea has been quite a negative influence on the quality of work you see out there and the work has taken on a lot of similarities.
Yeah I agree, it's nice to have a window into the process at first but eventually it's worthless spam on a feed that becomes really grating over time. It becomes tiring to witness every possible permutation of a shader that one person's working on. It starts to all feel like a big homogeneous soup of algorithmic content production just for the sake of the platform's own growth. I forget there's supposed to be a complete, detailed, complex thought in the form of the final piece at the end of the road, usually... which at this rate exists less and less as social media feeds dominate how we experience the web more and more.
Spoiler alert: it's a stinker showing that Mozart is overrated!
Haha, this is fun. I can see why art critics like doing it.
I follow him everyday and half the stuff he does makes me cringe and that's a good thing. It makes me question the very simple question of what is art, what is taste, why we even care. All in all, beeple is a terrific artist. If you wanted 5000 Mona Lisa, copy paste its image 5000 times.
From the article, Beeple’s work doesn’t do much for me, but nor does most other art. My tastes are unrefined and primitive.
But my tastes are completely my own. I am happy for those who get something out of pondering questions like “what is art?” It’s great that you enjoy Beeple. Don’t let this article bum you out.
At least when someone puts pink velour seats in their Bentley they don’t claim it’s a revolution.
The bernie-monster is fantastic IMHO, and I have nothing against Bernie Sanders.
Watching his workflow, and seeing them get slicker is a part of it too.
An NFT is no different. The more people talk about the Beeple work, analyze it, critique it, teach it in schools, write about it on websites, the more its legend and cachet will grow. That is why it has value - it represents the same things the baseball card does. Except an NFT can trade and move much quicker, given the internet and its digital nature.
Honestly looks like a piece of shit to me, something my child could do. Value of art doesn't have to do with skill.
It goes so low as to try to paint Beeple as a racist because he had the cheek to... draw a black person?
Honestly, the art world is poison. What a horrible article.
Criticizes heavily his earliest works being included, which would be absolutely fine only the entire point of the artwork is something is created every day - yet this reviewer seems to insist on reviewing each individual work as if it had been a long term project in its own right.
I don't usually like to get personal, but I'm absolutely sure the person who wrote this is an insufferable snob.
btw, I'm not saying you cant say his art is bad, they just did it in an incredibly poor way.
I don't care, personally, but man oh man this year isn't gonna be much more normal than last.
I actually think it's interesting to see his advances in skill, not bad for effectively a satire artist.
Art should only get praise?
I think maybe you just zoomed in on the word cancel, but I didn't even say anything negative about cancel culture, which you seem to want to defend, so don't bother here, I was commenting on the meteoric rise and fall of beeple, not on the act of cancelling or anything. Chill.