NFT — Is it art or just a hoax?
Wunderkammer Exhibit #6
Those three letters seem to be the hottest trend in the art world. Until recently, hardly anyone knew what non-fungible tokens were. Now many artists, gallery owners, and collectors are wondering whether they should participate in the NFT market.
When I saw that Christie’s had auctioned off an NFT from an artist called Beeple for almost 69.3 million dollars, I was amazed. At the time, I knew that non-fungible tokens were based on blockchain technology, which can be used to prove the ownership and originality of objects or rights. I found it bizarre that NFTs could be used for works of art that didn’t even exist in the physical world.
I personally don’t understand how someone could pay such an absurd amount for something that can’t be hung on the wall or put in a display case (leaving aside the question of aesthetics). Everydays: The First 5,000 Days was the title of the “artwork” by Beeple. But is it really art and is the man whose real name is Mike Winkelmann really an artist? To go by Joseph Beuys, whom I admire mainly as a thinker and activist, the answer would be: “Yes, everyone is an artist. And Everydays: The First 5,000 Days is a technically produced piece of art.”
Based on everything I knew, I was reluctant to accept that answer. Since art and the art market mirror social developments, I wondered: What does it say about our society when the possession of something that only exists in digital space is worth so much to the owner? Are these the consequences of a yearlong pandemic in which we’ve only been able to view things on our screens? And what kind of person collects NFT art? I was interested in an artist’s perspective on this subject.
A friend recommended that I talk to Charlie Stein. For many years, she’s been dealing with central social questions raised by technologization, robotics, and the relationship between humans and machines. Charlie’s primary medium is painting. She offered — and sold — two of her works as NFTs via the Bark Berlin Gallery. The Cologne-based Priska Pasquer Gallery is currently presenting her show Portrait of a Future in digital exhibition rooms on the Mozilla Hubs platform. Although she lives and works in Berlin, where I have an office, we agreed to meet in a video conference due to the pandemic.
Charlie, art fairs, exhibitions, and talks with artists have mostly been taking place digitally for more than a year. How has the pandemic changed the scene?
Charlie Stein: It’s nice that the barriers are falling and access to art is getting easier. Museums, galleries, and artists can reach a larger audience. Some say the art market is becoming more democratic, but I’m careful about that. Shifting something into the digital space isn’t enough to reach all groups of society, meaning people with different social and financial backgrounds. White tech-savvy men, the so-called Tech Bros, often talk about democratization, but I haven’t seen many minorities involved with NFTs or digital exhibitions yet.
Over the last few months, I’ve often explored museums and galleries digitally. But to me it feels like a poor surrogate. I can’t experience and understand the dimensions. For example, I only see textures in two dimensions. I don’t hear what others are saying about the exhibitions. What do you think is the value of digital formats?
You have to make distinctions. If you compare a visit to a virtual gallery with a visit to a physical gallery, the physical experience will always win — definitely at the moment and for the years to come. But for me, the virtual gallery is still better Netflix and Chill. There are also people in risk groups. Even with a mask and a negative corona test, it’s too dangerous for them to go to an exhibition. However, in the virtual space, they can meet up with friends for an exhibition opening and talk to artists. Think of the Venice Biennale: every two years, it’s one of the most beautiful art events, but it’s very difficult for people in wheelchairs to visit. We exclude people who aren’t physically fit or don’t have the financial means to fly over from the United States or elsewhere, for example. Digitization is a useful supplement, an additional mode.
Can you as an artist benefit from the possibilities of the digital world?
Oh, yes, quite a bit. If I wanted to build a sculpture that is two to three meters tall in the physical world, it might take me two years. I can work much faster in the virtual space. Several of my sculptures are now on display in Priska Pasquer’s virtual gallery. I generally think formats like Instagram Live Videos are great because you can easily invite people to see your space. I can stream the press conference of the next event to Nairobi. By the way, you can also take much better photos in a virtual gallery because there aren’t any disruptive elements such as wall sockets or light switches. You can quickly find the best angle for a shot, and there’s no need to climb ladders.
Don’t you miss the physical experiences?
Yes, of course, I miss them a lot. I just visited my frame maker, and he had a big restoration job from a museum. He turned over the frame he was working on and showed me the front of the painting. That was a great feeling. When I look at the sculpture Abduction of the Sabine Women in Florence, a shiver runs down my spine. But sometimes it’s difficult for painters to switch back and forth between working in seclusion and socializing at events. At times we’re holed up in the studio, work eight hours a day, and don’t notice what’s going on around us. Going out is then very liberating. At an exhibition opening, we see our own work in a different context. But it can get to be too much and be really exhausting. You can lose yourself in the process.
So it’s not such a bad time for artists who prefer to stay in their studios?
It’s good not to have to attend every event. I think some people appreciate being able to control how much external contact they have. Before the pandemic, travel took on an entirely different dimension. Every month you were tempted to visit art fairs, the opening of new museums around the world, and a huge range of exhibitions. In some cases you even went. Incidentally, that was also environmental lunacy. During the pandemic, nothing has been happening in the outside world, so you can concentrate more on yourself and your own work.
Now you can create and curate your own spaces. Do you still need a gallery?
That’s a good question. I think the work of gallery owners will remain important. They’ll continue to create networks. Galleries are hubs for artists, even if ties remain loose. It feels a bit like a collective. Trust in the work of artists is strengthened if people know which gallery represents them and what other artists they’re associated with.
Is it still fair that artists have to sacrifice between 50 and 60 percent of the proceeds to the gallery when their works are sold?
That has to be negotiated on an individual basis. There’s this expectation that a lot of things on the Internet are free. But actually, setting up an exhibition in a virtual space takes effort too. We worked with a digital architect. For the three-dimensional presentation, the maximum usable number of polygons are the limit at the moment. Optimizing them is quite a challenge. Together with the artists, the gallery also chooses the works and curates them.
So the gallery does a lot of the same things in digital space that it does in physical space. Is the gallery also a gatekeeper and guarantor of quality?
Ideally, yes. Gallery owners lend a show their credibility, even if the gallery exists only on the Internet. They do press work, invite collectors and journalists, and make the work accessible to a wider audience. In return, they receive a corresponding share of the proceeds. That’s fair since gallery and artist also share the work.
Can someone who does nothing more than arrange pixels and sell them as NFT on a platform be considered an artist?
There are already people who paint digitally, who create animations that tell short stories. Broadly speaking, some of this can be described as art. But there is also a lot of stuff out there that’s just a mere placeholder, things that were created quickly, just images superimposed on other images, by people who lack artistic education.
So there are big differences in quality?
Yes, sure. But you also have to understand where that comes from. In the beginning there was this new idea of doing NFTs. There was a lot more demand for this pseudo-currency than artists who could make the art. Beeple was someone who had worked like this for a long time. And his work was then selected by an auction house as an example of this particular art form. Then suddenly a lot of people flooded the market with their NFTs — a perfect inflation scenario. And now they’re partly surprised that they’re not making as much money from it as they thought they would. NFTs are very closely linked to blockchain and the Bitcoin idea: at the moment, there’s a lot out there and very few mechanisms to assess what’s good and what’s bad. That’s where we are at right now. That’s why there’s already a certain amount of disappointment.
Do you have any idea why people buy art that only exists in digital space?
It’s a personality thing. We have to look at how the collectors who buy and sell a lot of art operate at trade shows. They put many of the purchased works in storage. There’s always been a money and power elite for whom ownership is a value in itself, without things being accessible to the public or being hung on a wall. Today, collectors can show their NFT in a wallet on their smartphone — everything is very transparent. Everyone knows who owns which NFT and what it originally sold for. This knowledge alone ennobles the owner. That’s the cold economic approach to art. But if you look at it philosophically, it’s very exciting. The bragging rights that someone acquires with an NFT replacing the physical work.
What do you mean by that?
“Bragging rights” means you have the right to boast about something. The performative act of owning is taken to the extremes. Somebody says, “Look, I own this NFT.” That’s how they draw attention to themselves. And even if it’s not tangible, it’s measurable. The owner of a valuable NFT (e.g. a Beeple or Paris Hiton NFT) is googled much more frequently. If I’m an investor and people know I have a very expensive NFT because everyone can see my wallet, then it has a value that is quite real. They suddenly may have a higher credit rating in some circles and new opportunities come up.
But this creates the same elitist structures that the founders of Ethereum and the cryptocurrency used to pay for NFTs actually wanted to abolish. Now these structures are simply being transferred to a parallel digital universe. The goal was to break the power of the banks and the elites. The fact is, the circle of people who can afford to pay 70 million dollars for an NFT is just as small as those who can afford to buy a Picasso or a Monet.
You’re right. It’s definitely the case of “old wine in new bottles.” Who in the crypto world is angry about the fact that there are elites in the art world? These are buyers who have a lot of money, but who haven’t yet had any cultural access to art. Such access is gained by education, excessive self-study, and years of work. These hurdles exist for good reasons. Declaring them to be unnecessary has led to the emergence of shallow NFTs. With respect to NFTs, art historians say, “I don’t need to deal with them because they’re shallow and have little to do with previous art history.” Not all NFTs are like that, but there are many that are inspired by advertising rather than art history. They have no real depth and don’t reflect on their own existence. This can quickly become boring, and their quality is questionable.
When does it make sense to “mint” a physical work of art?
When it fits with the medium conceptually. In the 1980s, for example, Edward Kienholz, made “Concept Tableaux” that embody ideas. The idea is the actual work. I find it exciting to think about NFTs in this way. You give an idea a digital form and someone can acquire it. It’s not tied to any object in the real world. An NFT doesn’t come with the right to further process the digital content in other formats. It exists hermetically as an NFT. It’s self-contained.
You also recently sold two NFTs. What kind of works were they ?
I used the possibilities of the medium. My aim was to visualize being trapped in the NFT. One work is called Sad Robot. It’s a digital representation of an image I painted. In digital space, a sad robot woman blinks and moves a bit, as if she’s locked in the new technology. Generally speaking, I like to give all media a chance — lino prints, photographs, or even NFTs — in order to cross-check my own work in other contexts. NFTs are hot right now. In Silicon Valley, everyone wants to be the first to own one. When Christie’s and Sotheby’s decide to auction them off, it’s an indication that something exciting is happening. NFTs have arrived in the mainstream. As an artist I have to weigh the question: do they endanger my work or offer new opportunities? The opportunities that Beeple enjoys are not open to every contemporary artist.
Are you going to do more NFTs in the future?
Earlier this year, an NFT was sold that was basically just a meme of LeBron James blocking an attack at a basketball game. When I saw this, I realized that the tokens depict key moments of our age. NFTs are not a medium of the art world. They’re very much linked to the attention and hype economy. But this is also relatively typical of the art market. I’m not a chicken with its head cut off. I’m not going to change the way I work, make some bad quick works over the course of a couple of weeks, and sell it as an NFT. It has to be something that I really want to be out there. You can see it as an opportunity.
Charlie Stein — beautifully critical
Charlie Stein learned her craft from Gerhard Merz (painting and graphics), as well as from Christian Jankowski and Rainer Ganahl (sculpture and new media). In her work, she deals with different perceptions of cultural identity in the context of a highly digitized, visually saturated world. She deliberately plays with the Disneyfication of faces, made possible by Instagram, Snapchat, and other filters, and explores the male gaze — the way men look at women. With their oversized eyes and mouths, her sad-looking robot women hold our gaze and force us to question our relationship to machines and artificial intelligence. What do we expect from machines? How do we envision them? And what if these innocent robots continue to evolve?
Where to see Charlie’s recent work
Charlie Stein
on her website, of course
First Day Above Ground, Bark Berlin Gallery
Köthener Straße 28, 10963 Berlin
May 8–20, 2021; by appointment
Portrait of a Future, Priska Pasquer Gallery, Cologne
virtual exhibition
NFT (Kitties) LAB, Bark Berlin Gallery
virtual exhibition
Take-away for innovators
These aspects of NFTs are exciting for the creative industries:
- An NFT is a medium, a technological application, not an artwork in itself.
- The message should fit the medium and use its potential. The NFT should be more than a mere digital representation of a physical object.
- As the name suggests, NFTs are not interchangeable. They show the originality of an idea or a work and identify its owner. They tell us who can use the ideas or work and under what conditions.
- If the owner changes, everyone can see it. The creator/author participates in the resale and use.
- There are quality differences. To some extent, curated exhibitions and auctions separate the wheat from the chaff.
Recommendations for viewing digital art and NFTs
Resonant Realities at the Haus am Lützowplatz (HaL)
VR Art Prize of the DKB in cooperation with CAA Berlin
Curated by Tina Sauerländer
on view until June 4, 2021
The Artist Is Online — group exhibition at Johann König Galerie on the Decentraland platform
Auction closed on March 31, 2021
Some impressions on youtube
The artists Signe Pierce, Rachel Rossin on the Foundation platform (@withfoundation on Instagram and Twitter)
The Almine Rech Gallery on the Niftygateway platform
