Art
I was painting tonight, so I thought that I might sit for a few minutes and write about Art.
Art is more accessible than at any time in history, and its boundaries have been stretched inconceivably by the invisible hand of the market. Artists now produce and sell works that are freely available to everyone as digital images that cannot and do not have any connection to a tangible object.
I am glad that artists are getting paid for their digital works, and I applaud them for working outside the bounds of the scarcity model of value.
Still, this is ownership that means little other than being able to proclaim oneself an owner as what one owns if often freely available to everyone and can never truly be captured. The owner is not able to gatekeep or control access to what they own. This is not ownership at all, but rather bragging rights dressed up as ownership—just as wealth itself amongst the wealthy is little more than bragging rights.
Does this system have value in the production of art?
There is the supporting of the artist financially, a necessity under Capitalism.
The assigning of value to the work of the artists, in any form, can be a value boost to the creative process. Artists may undertake more ambitious projects as the result of the valuing of their work. There certainly could and should be other means of assigning value, but demand for the art from a public is a good means of assigning value if we believe that art is for the people.
I have begun to feel dubious that we will be living too much of our future lives in the Metaverse, so I don’t know how much value NFTs might potentially have as digital residence decorations.
There is so much digital art, and endless rabbit hole of it. I’ve spent my share of time in the rabbit hole (which gives me a good idea for another blog post category just posting collections from my archive of screenshots), but I don’t know that I really want to be in it anymore.
I would like to write a bit about The Whitney Biennial, as experienced virtually, so expect that to dribble out in this space over the next few weeks, months, or however long it takes me.
I’m going to conclude by sharing some of my own art from 2011-2013:
