Issue 5
Ten Oracular Pronouncements, Tyrannical Style Dictates, And Various Pleas, For NFT Art in 2022
Dear Readers,
I have two pieces currently in edits for publication on NFT art; one is about Zancan,plotter art,and Benjaminian ruins, and the other is a theoretical, elegiac numbered essay on speed and looking. As a consequence of this relevant critical work, this week’s Tokens of Affection will be short and (hopefully) amusing. Keep an eye out on my twitter for when this public writing runs, since it will likely be of interest to you if you read this Substack.
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♡ ❧ Ten Oracular Pronouncements, Tyrannical Style Dictates, And Various Pleas, For NFT Art in 2022 ☙ ♡
(in no particular order)
Artists, quit it with the Pepes. I associate Pepe the Frog with white supremacy and Gamergate movements originating in toxic pits on 4Chan. Yes, I know the creator tried to reclaim his cartoon character, even minting it as an NFT. The valances are still too powerful for me to escape them, though, and if you’re using Pepe you should be explicitly commenting on them. I wouldn’t bet on Pepe ageing well for this reason either. Do you want women, people of color, and LGBTQIA++ people in the web3 space? Don’t plaster it with Pepe! We remember!
Stop copying Basquiat. Yes, once could argue that all visual culture is to some degree derivative, but I am so sick of pseudo-Basquiat, stripped of his political and sociological consequences and particular moment in history. I understand that many NFTs call back to street art culture, but a call-back is not merely imitation. It feels generic by now.
Safe generative art is out. Sometimes, I look on ArtBlocks and I see a well-financed artist, likely curated by committee, default to a bad critique of abstraction; that is, making something to match the sofa. Even if it’s a gorgeous expensive Ligne Roset sofa, which I covet, this is a no-go for me. I love generative art (see: last issue’s exhibition), but buying pre-made “blue chip” is buying boring. No one will care about such a piece in five years. Be risky. Posterity is longer than a Dutch auction.
Photography is having a moment. This is especially interesting, since its status as a super-reproductive and reproducible medium has always been under scrutiny in the art world. But what do on-blockchain photography pieces promise that their off-chain counterparts don’t already do? I’ve seen a few experiments in lensless chemical photography as NFTs that look promising, but some more material experimentation seems in order. I’ll be on the lookout this year.
Ethereum is getting price blocked, Tezos benefits. The gas wars + market crash mean people who like emerging artists and more avant-garde work are buying on Tezos. Paradoxically, big-name collector pieces tend to appear still on the ETH chain. Is this is bifurcation of the crypto world into an experimental space and a high-value pfp and other space? We’ll see…
Curatorial options are still dire. Wallet-casting frames that run Javascript cost more than I paid for the art I want to showcase in them (still ca 1000 USD). I hear stories from friends about curators still relying on custom hardware for shows at big fairs, while the projector option doesn’t really work for mouse-responsive and body-responsive pieces. Metaverse galleries force work into a simulacrum of space. I just want a nice, clean interface that allows me to mount a multi-chain exhibition web-natively on a flat background! Is this too much to ask? This seems like an opportunity for someone.
Hot naked women are so 1997. Listen, I get that this is a thing people want in dorm room posters. I get that this can even happen in fine art. I don’t, however, find it terribly compelling qua art just to see a picture of a stereotypically attractive naked woman. Actually, even when they’re not naked, depictions of women in NFT pieces tend to lead to stereotypical cyberpunk girl goddess (with some notable and very good exceptions).The hot lady nudes will all be negligible as art in the long term because they offer no sustained challenge. Show me some bodies that make me do more than wonder where she got her lip liner.
Figital is exploding. That is do say, physical-digital dual pieces, especially prints. I’m excited for this because I enjoy the restfulness to the eye paper offers, but it obviously won’t work for some pieces that are designed to exploit the nature of the web and blockchain transaction itself. Sculpture? Wearables in physical form after digital, aka clothes? Slime? Dust? I’m here for it, and think possibilities are broad. I look forward to seeing a piece that makes this dual presence feel truly radical, even uncomfortable.
Twitter will continue to mock apes getting stolen. And I will enjoy every second of it. If big name collectors in the NFT space don’t learn to act with maturity online, the traditional art world will continue to roll its eyes. Major collectors with ape pfps making childish pronouncements about the death of all other non-NFT media and its markets only hurt them in the end. Some of those Artnet threads by NFT eminences were truly, deeply cringeworthy freshman philosophy papers with libertarian sprinkles on them. I beg of you, apes: learn to write and think in public!
Auction houses: will they really look? The biggest market question of 2022 for me is whether Christie’s and Sotheby’s specifically will continue to inexplicably favour super big-name high price projects in the crypto-art space when they don’t do so with physical and historical pieces (they sell a lot of meaningful anonymous period furniture, for example). I’d love to see a deep dive into Objkt/HEN/Foundation from some of these big players to recognise innovative work at lower price ranges that nonetheless deserves to be collected on an international stage. I wouldn’t bet on it though; after all, both houses pretty explicitly got into this for the money (they’re businesses, not museums), and don’t even bother with the window dressing of artistic worth. I’d love to be proven wrong, though.
★ Happy New Year ! ★
Share any of your predictions, gripes, hopes, and irrational needs for NFT art in 2022 in the comments below, or on Twitter here along with this post:
I'm excited to have come across your work in RightClickSave and to continue to read! I am also extremely interested and really excited on the "Figital" works that will be coming out in the next year.