On the absurdity of the commodity and the arbitrariness of the art market.
NFT Art. Crypto-collectibles? Digital art? Subculture?
What is art?
Before I go into more detail on non-fungible-tokens, or NFTs, I would like to devote a short digression to so-called high culture and its art.
The Duden gives us the following definition: art is “creative design from the most diverse materials or with the means of language or sound in confrontation with nature and the world.” With this quotation, I will try to roughly categorise the concept of art in order to go into it in more detail in the following. For this purpose, I have drawn on Emmanuel Kant and his Critique of the Power of Judgement, which deals with his doctrine of aesthetics and the attempt to recognise the beauty in art with the help of the concept of the power of judgement.
According to Kant, art is something created, not something natural, but it should still appear as if it were an effect of nature.
Moreover, it was indisputable that art served a purpose and pursued an intention. Beauty found in nature, is imitated in art — but it is an artificial beauty here — and once the beauty of the object is realized, it affects, if not destroys, the object. The fact that all art seeks an intention and consequently serves a purpose is undeniable, but there is also the fact that any purpose an artist might pursue would have to hinder the creation of beauty. In the free play of imagination without constructing a beauty, art irritates and disturbs us.
To sum up, we can say that, according to Kant, high culture art is an imitation of the beauty of nature, on all levels of the senses — the possibility of recognising this art is always to be considered contextualised. Now I wonder: Is the art of subcultures a method of depicting nature as destroyed?
NFT’s definitely belong to a modern form of art that cannot necessarily be viewed with the classical understanding of art according to Kant.
NFTs — Subculture, trend or logical development in art?
Are NFTs a niche, a subculture or simply a development of the ever-changing arbitrariness of the art market? Let’s dig deeper into that question.
To start this discussion, I will give you Sarah Throntons definition of subcultures to see, if whatever’s evolving around NFTs, fits into it: „Subcultures come in many, varied and disputed forms, and although there is no consensus about definition of a ›subculture‹ amongst the contributors to the reader, most would agree that subcultures can be broadly defined as social groups organized around shared interests and practices […]. While some subcultures are secretive, others are spectaculary public in their clothes, music and behaviour. Subcultures often distinguish themselves against others — workers, achievers, ›squares‹ or the ›mainstream”.
In view of this definition, it is quite possible to say that the NFT art movement is a subculture in the art scene. However, the appeal of these works of art cannot be negated and is comparable to all other collectibles, not only in the art scene. Anyone and everyone can buy an art print by Miro, I have one at home too, but only one person can own the original. Just like NFT art. Downloading a file anyone can do it, but not actually owning it. Just like reselling it, bragging about it or simply collecting it can only be done by one person. Only those who are registered on the blockchain as collectors can collect. Are the collectors of NFTs then decisively different from other art collectors?
The Züricher Allgemein Zeitung describes the buyers of NFTs as young, tech-savvy and often anonymous. They are familiar with cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies and see NFTs as a new form of investment. The mechanisms in the blockchain art collector scene, however, work like those of the buyers at Christies and other auction houses. Here too, the better known the artist, the more people will want to own one of his/her works. Consequently, the value of the work increases when it is resold.
In a consideration of different definitions of subculture, we were able to work out that the actors of NFT art are (still) actors of a subculture. Blockchain and crypto are not mainstream topics, nor are NFTs regularly traded at well-known art auctions. Due to the almost daily record sums and actors like Fynn Kliemann appearing in the scene, the topic is moving more and more into the centre of society. Unlike the well-known subcultures such as the punks, there is a less clear boundary between the mainstream society and that of the NFT actors.
Stay tuned for our next article which will talk about social media and the role NFTs may play for users and creators in the future.
1st February 2022, Chiara Kraft
