DIGITAL ART IS HAVING A MOMENT

Beeple’s recordsetting Everydays: The First 5000 Days NFT artwork

From websites to augmented reality, digital works are a booming market. Is it a fad or the future? Exploring the controversial trend disrupting the art world

by David Graver

AS LONG as there have been artists, there have been people questioning the definition of art, defying its merits, and denouncing its value. This applies to each movement within every medium—from the rejected masterpieces of antiquity to the backlash against the broad sweep of digital photography. Last year’s $69 million sale of Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days NFT artwork by a leading auction house proved no exception. Suddenly, a little-known figure found himself among the top three most valued living artists—and for a digitized work. The uproar was near deafening.

Outrage over NFTs (non-fungible tokens that certify a digital asset on the blockchain) came from a perfect storm of factors. Many outside the art world—and many within—had no idea what NFTs were. Sticker shock from the Beeple sale triggered questions about art-market regulation and cryptocurrency credibility. Finally, the floodgates broke and NFTs were everywhere, signaling what felt like a cash grab that benefited only a few.

The Beeple sale might have led to a bubble, but regardless, NFTs are here to stay. According to a recent Dapp Industry Report, which monitors distributed ledger technologies, NFTs brought in $2.4 billion in Q2 of 2021, growth from the $2.3 billion reported in

One might argue that creative courage and boundary pushing are essential.

Damien Hirst with The Currency Project, his first NFT series

Q1. Aligning with this continued interest, the NFT marketplace OpenSea soared to a $1.5 billion valuation and welcomed $100 million from the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

THE BASICS, EXPLAINED

Neophytes might be surprised to learn that NFTs and digital art are far from synonymous. Not all NFTs are digital art; some are more appropriately dubbed digital collectibles. For instance, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet as an NFT for $2.9 million. And not all digital art needs to be certified on the blockchain, though it can have its benefits.

What’s more, digital art is hardly new. In 1967 computer graphics pioneer and painter Ken Knowlton and researcher Leon Harmon manipulated a photograph to look like it was composed of computer pixels. This work, Computer Nude (Studies in Perception 1), is often considered the first fully digital artwork.

NFTs, too, have been part of the art world for quite a while. Kevin McCoy minted the first one in May 2014. Today platforms are popping up everywhere to mint and sell digital art and collectibles. Iconic artists are also validating them, including Damien Hirst, who dropped 10,000 individual NFTs as part of The Currency Project. Hirst’s act reinforces the bubble on behalf of the creator, not the buyer, though both ultimately benefit.

LOVE FROM FILM AND TECH

The digital art boom, powered by technological advancements, is getting support from some of the world’s biggest brands. BMW has a heritage of art cars dating from 1975 and includes vehicles designed by global icons like Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Jeff Koons, and Jenny Holzer. The company recently transferred several of these vehicles into a free augmented reality app called Acute Art. This allows anyone with a smartphone to view the cars up close and, through their screen, place them in their own driveways. Acute Art has also worked with contemporary artists to design digital artwork that people can access anywhere, in a move that aims to democratize art.

Film festivals, too, reinforce the value of digital art. From Venice to Tribeca, and especially Sundance and

Jeff Koons lent his talents to this uniquely painted BMW.

BMW commissioned Alexander Calder to mastermind this car’s look. David Hockney designed this one-ofa-kind BMW for the luxury carmaker.

Spirit of Being at The Garage, from Microsoft and Hatchers its pioneering New Frontier division, these platforms feature cutting-edge virtual reality and augmented reality programming, as well as immersive artwork that tests the boundaries of the medium. Artists like Rachel Rossin—an alum of New Museum’s NEW INC incubator, which develops talent that works at the intersection of technology and art—unveil work accessed through headsets. These aren’t like many VR games consumers can play at home; they’re of astounding artistic merit and question the rules of form, narrative, and time.

Mighty tech companies are also getting on board. In lieu of their intended in-person gallery in New York City, Microsoft launched its first-ever virtual gallery earlier this year. Known as The Garage, the online space opened with the exhibit Spirit of Being, which includes a few images of tactile works that exist in the real world, but also digital-only inventions. One creation, by artist

The digital art boom is getting support from some of the world’s biggest brands.

Maria Kozak, is a website that features a narrative voyage through the history of the internet; this unique piece can, in fact, be purchased. Here, a collector will receive the domain and agree to keep it live—and the work (though not an NFT) receives a blockchain-like certification from Fairchain, which guarantees its authenticity.

That, of course, is one of the alluring attributes of what we are witnessing in the world of NFTs: the ability to prove authenticity and provenance. When an NFT is minted, the digital collectible’s file is certified and given proof of ownership (together, these serve as a kind of deed). This lends value to digital art—a medium that’s long been diminished because it is easily piratable or exists on social media channels. With NFT authentication, a digital work becomes singular—or at least scarce. This is part of the reason artists continue to fuel the fire: They can prove ownership of their digital art and sell it in a secure manner, often for the first time. That’s good news for both artists and collectors, as these works have the potential to appreciate in value.

Do some remain skeptical? Of course. But every vanguard movement has met with resistance, from Impressionists rejected by the Paris Salon as radicals to pop artists dismissed as aesthetic frauds. And one might argue that creative courage and boundary pushing are essential if art is to expand perception. New York painter Mark Rothko once called art “an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take risks.” Only time will tell if NFTs prove more ephemeral than groundbreaking.

Work by Beatie Wolfe and Uttam Grandhi at The Garage CREDITS

DanceLife, a video work by Maria Kozak

Painter and new media artist Maria Kozak