Imagine going to the museum and showing people this paper. “Look, I bought this piece of art!” But even though you bought it, you don’t own it, so you aren’t able to take it home or anything like that.
I know nothing about NFTs, but in the last few days I’ve seen a few people turn their Twitter accounts private where they previously posted their artworks. Supposedly to prevent sales of NFTs of their art without their approval. No idea if that’s a real issue or not. However there is another comment here saying they sold a NFT of Mona Lisa. It seems that a “piece of paper with a, possibly forged, signature” might be a better comparison.
It is. I guess like with every new crypto pyramid scheme, a bunch of fraudsters show up trying to profit from the FOMO. Have a look at https://twitter.com/simonstalenhag for some examples of what one artist is facing right now.
These people sold someone else's art, and then called him a luddite for not being ok with it.
yeah, my jaw dropped. Holy shit.
Every time I enter the crypto twittersphere, I'm more convinced it's all just a huge cult. Half zealots and true believers and half trolls. Much like QAnon. "You don't understand it's the future!" No, no I'm quite capable of understanding. The internet brought a lot of like-minded people together under a shared mass delusion.
- https://twitter.com/ricardojuchem/status/1369957369833226241
- https://twitter.com/simonstalenhag/status/136966166114619392...
- https://twitter.com/simonstalenhag/status/136968271596920832...
It is a real issue and the issue has nothing to do with NFTs. People been copying others art without their permission for as long as "art" has existed as a concept.
That is nominally dealing with physical world realities, and the complex social norms at work through networks of galleries, museums, and collectors is a big part of what drives and maintains value and there’s really no reason that the title and provenance systems that work for photographic prints can’t work for digital art in the same way. In fact it has for a couple of decades already without NFTs.
At least this is how I'm going to currently reinterpret NFTs—as digitally signed artwork/merchandise—I may see it differently tomorrow.
Much like prints, you don't own the art itself, or the rights to the image. The rarity of the print can change at any point.
Like many prints, a lot are not even from the original artist and are instead stolen and resold on any number of markets.
There's no real world value to a print, but in this case there's a significant real world environmental cost to acquiring it.
It's sheer stupidity of the masses IMHO.
Do cease and desists even apply here? For example could you tangibly ruin the market for a future NFT artist by flooding the market with their artwork before they get on it?
One can most certainly remove their artwork from museums pretty much as they please or at the very least according to terms of a loan contract. Not to mention special access and privileges loaned artwork bestows upon the owner...
But they can’t show the film in public and doing so outside of the social and institutional context where it establishes its value would be 100% verboten. There would also be strong social norms against sharing the file online or with friends. It’s false scarcity but it’s maintained by everyone involved because it’s part of the ruleset that creates a functioning economy. Anyone who exhibited a work they didn’t own or have loaned to them would be an instant pariah in the art world. All of this has worked reasonably well for years without NFTs. It wouldn’t be uncommon for Jeff Wall to mail high resolution images of his work to a magazine and even though the art director that received them could go out and print a copy that would look like one of the three legal editions, it wouldn’t allow them to participate in the work. But they would get to hang a nice photo on their wall even though they would pay the cost of all their artist and artist adjacent friends would considering them a philistine.
It’s possible that what we’re witnessing now is a true disintermediation of the institutions that make up the art world and the creation of independent pathways for meaning to be discovered and valuation to be determined. Is the art world changing or being disrupted by NFTs? Probably not really, they may be incorporated into art collecting in some limited way over time once the hype dies down.
The social context is still missing in the idea of pure NFT collecting and is missing engaging with or recreating a culture of art appreciation and patronage. Beeple aside, 99% of the NFT stuff out there is much more of a mix of speculation, consumption, and more appropriate for collectibles than art. A lot of the content is basic meme stuff, and memes derive their value from ubiquity, and democratization. The ethos of Reddit where people won’t even repost stuff that has a small watermark on it is more appropriate for this sort of consumable than anything you’d apply the word art to.
But I could be totally wrong, I definitely never anticipated what is happening now back in 2013 when bitcoin folks were going on about “coloured coins”.
Being the owner, you can take your painting or NFT home by not giving permission for any exhibitions.