anabelle’s blog 11

The article Beeple’s digital ‘artwork’ sold for more than any painting by Titian or Raphael,” discusses what the impacts the capitalization of art may have on the industry through the lens of NFTs. It highlights the auctioning of Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days for $69.3 million, one of the highest bids for art in history. The author criticizes how nonphysical, nontechnical, and nonbeautiful art has gripped the capitalist market by rebranding them as special NFTs, or digital property. He seems most turned off by how the two highest bidders were both founders of blockchain companies — blockchains are exactly how NFTs receive their value, so the entire event feels orchestrated in his opinion. I think NFTs can be respected as a type of commerce, but I hesitate to call each individual work art. Either way, new technology and new ways of creating goods for the market will always appear and resisting them can be pretty futile.

Citation:
Washington Post. “Perspective | Beeple’s Digital ‘Artwork’ Sold for More than Any Painting by Titian or Raphael. But as Art, It’s a Great Big Zero.” Accessed November 19, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/beeple-digital-artwork-sale-perspective/2021/03/15/6afc1540-8369-11eb-81db-b02f0398f49a_story.html.