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Your observation: > I bet someone would buy a preserved notebook of someone semi-famous with 5000 pages of drawings, mostly regardless of contents ...is, I th
by chipotle_coyote 6y ago
Your observation:
> I bet someone would buy a preserved notebook of someone semi-famous with 5000 pages of drawings, mostly regardless of contents
...is, I think, kind of what the article author is trying to get at. Beeple is arguably semi-famous not for his art, but for getting a staggering price for these 5000 images. It's as if someone bought a preserved notebook with 5000 pages drawings for tens of millions of dollars, and the notebook belong to someone who is semi-famous because... they sold that notebook for tens of millions of dollars.
While I keep trying to give NFTs a benefit of the doubt -- I think it's great for creators to be paid for their work! -- I'm not convinced that introducing artificial scarcity is the way to go about it, and this sort of "it commanded a high price because it commanded a high price" recursiveness doesn't exactly give us a great example for why NFTs are not a peculiar techno-bubble.
- selfhoster11 6y agoBeeple was semi-famous long before he auctioned these images.
- chipotle_coyote 6y agoIn the non-digital art world, "semi-famous" doesn't get you Picasso prices.
- freeone3000 6y agoThey're a peculiar ART bubble. This is exactly how art galleries and fine art sales work. If this notebook was physical instead, nobody would be tremendously surprised -- if you were, you just don't get art.
- jjeaff 6y agoBeing one of the highest prices ever paid at auction for a piece of art, i think it would definitely raise a lot of eyebrows. If not more. At least as an nft, it can be attributed to the crypto bubble. If an art book from a completely unknown artist sold his art at a Christie's auction for $69m, i think everyone would assume something nefarious was going on.
- incrudible 6y agoBeeple isn't a "complete unknown", pretty much every 3D artist knows him, he's produced and published more digital art than anyone else. He's arguably the Andy Warhol of 3D rendering. It's only now that somehow people found a way to make money from all these 3D renderings that the general public pays attention.
- SiempreViernes 6y agoCalling him the Andy Warhol of 3d rendering is to not understand what Warhol did. Beeple is indeed famous for his quantity: occasionally he puts out something good, but the fame is almost entirely for the pieces that are "crazy good for having been done in under a day".
- pas 6y agoWhat Warhol did?
- Lazare 6y ago> Beeple isn't a "complete unknown", pretty much every 3D artist knows him, he's produced and published more digital art than anyone else. He's arguably the Andy Warhol of 3D rendering. I cannot stress enough how much of an overstatement that is. He's not the first, the biggest, the best, the most popular, or most prolific artist, he's not very well known in the space, and I think few, if any, professional 3D artists would hold him in high regard. And I would be surprised if, prior to the current media blitz, more than a small minority of 3D artists had actually even heard of him. You're right, he's not a complete unknown, and he's certainly had some successes, but he's just one of an enormous number of artists working in that space. And by no means a standout along any metric.
- incrudible 6y agoHe's definitely the most prolific 3D artist, ever. Nobody else even comes close. As for being "the best" or "the biggest" or "the most popular", these terms don't make sense even in non-digital art. Indeed, he is not any of these things, but neither was Andy Warhol. It's not a coincidence that he, of all people, managed to sell 69 million dollars worth of cookie-cutter crap. That's what makes him the Andy Warhol of digital art. That's how he earned his place in art history. As for the "enormous number" of other 3D artists, most of them are busy creating escapist stuff that will never get the attention of the art scene. To that end, skill just doesn't matter.
- codeulike 6y agoAny situation where money meets art doesn't make any sense. Is the original of a Banksy painting any nicer to look at than a copy? Is a rare vinyl pressing of a record any nicer to listen to than an mp3 you can download for free?
- the_af 6y ago> Is a rare vinyl pressing of a record any nicer to listen to than an mp3 you can download for free? I get your point but this isn't a particularly suitable example. Audiophiles have been arguing for ages that the quality of compressed mp3 and even CDs is not comparable to vinyl, that vinyl is "warmer", etc. Flamewars have been waged about this. So maybe not the best example?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- posterboy 6y agoMP3 is lossy by design but pretty good. FLAC is lossless. Same question by analogy. Vinyl as a physical medium may be literally warm though, about room temperature. But swinging air waves are pretty much the definition of heat, so...
- the_af 6y agoThe point is that, for a lot of audiophiles, this question: > Is a rare vinyl pressing of a record any nicer to listen to than an mp3 you can download for free? is answered with a very loud "yes!". I thought this was common knowledge here at HN. I've certainly seen this debate multiple times here. You don't have to pick a side or argue technicalities, you just need to be aware that for many people one format is indeed nicer than the other.
- tim333 6y agoWell a different sort of sense. Price is not just about how nice something is - it's about things like supply and demand too. There is a limited supply of original Banksys and an infinite supply of copies.