41 ms·

All 5000 Images in Beeple’s $69M Magnum Opus:What I Found Isn’t So Pretty

222 points by hx2a 6y ago

TheRealNGenius 6y ago
First I heard of Beeple was like a year ago, on Corridor Crew: https://youtu.be/_ul9jrCXhR4 https://youtu.be/_ul9jrCXhR4 So when I read about some NFT crypto art selling for 69 million, I was genuinely surprised that it was at least someone I had heard about before. It’s not exactly my cup of tea, but I respect Beeple’s dedication to his art. When I read this article, it felt less a critique of the merits of Beeple’s art, and more like a hit piece on their character. Cherry-picked are examples of past artwork likely to offend somebody, somewhere. In my opinion, art critique isn’t that hard, I even wrote about it here, https://wndr.xyz/posts/9fjM1tOJO7MWX4fYw3AU2Q==/what-s-art-and-what-s-not https://wndr.xyz/posts/9fjM1tOJO7MWX4fYw3AU2Q==/what-s-art-a.... This however is not an analysis of the artwork, but a meta-analysis of the subjects of Beeple’s art. If this qualifies someone a National Art Critic, then it probably is “fancy-dancy elite art homo” thinking. But hey, it got people to click and read their article I guess.
- dash2 6y ago
  What? No, it's a critique of the art. It points out that the images are unfunny satire, or earnest political right-on-itude, or just trying out photoshop filters. Honestly, they could have just posted the images and that would have been condemnation enough. I mean, good for him for making money, but let's not pretend this is interesting art for anyone over fifteen.
  - nailer 6y ago
    > No, it's a critique of the art. It points out that the images are unfunny satire, or earnest political right-on-itude, or just trying out photoshop filters. Humor is a matter of personal taste. Art isn't craft.
    - dash2 6y ago
      Sure! People who forward Facebook posts for their biting political wit will love this stuff, and who am I to disagree?
      - nailer 6y ago
        The artwork doesn't remotely strike me as the kind of thing one would typically see on Facebook. More 4chan, Tumblr, etc.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    I appreciate the art critic posting this, because I wouldn,t have seen the images otherwise. I find them both hilarious and thought-provoking, as I do the writer's snobbish dry analysis.
imaginationra 6y ago
Mediocre artist using cg as a crutch with a gimmick of making an image everyday- yeah that's called "work" and you are supposed to work everyday- I don't see what the big deal is. Don't we all work everyday? Can I make a commit for 5000 days in a row then sell the text as an NFT? Probably not as I couldn't gain 2 million InstaZuck followers by creating commits with "trump sucks" and "whoa the future is crazy maaaan" as the description everyday.... or could I? All the "political" art is lame. That's all future dustbin stuff. It panders to plebs who don't understand how the world really works to pay the bills, boring. There isn't even any layers of abstraction like some of the animations by Svankmajer have, its just topical Murican dumb shit. It's like bro art. You know those dudes... Dude's who have "cool tattoo's" and pride themselves on the kind of micro-brew beer they drink and smoke hand rolled cigars cut with Damascus steel or some shit- those dudes like that kind of art- its embarrassing. Also the Beeple dude owes the Cinema 4d and Octane render programmers some money- without their engineering his "art" would have remained like those lousy drawings. If 5000 of those drawings is the requirement for making 70 million all the ten year olds out there are going to be rich. I really like Ethereum too- makes me feel dirty when I interact with the chain now. We should ask Lord Vitalik to do a hard fork so this shitty art NFT thing never happened. They can have a new fork for the crappy art- Pabst Blue Eth. None of his art says anything other than "look at me", but then again he's a "designer". Graphic designers/Mograph artists have nothing to say other than "look at me" They are the narcissists of the art world. They are soulless. If they had souls, and had something important to say they would make full length narrative works but they don't. They just make stupid faces and do the "hang loose" hands or whatever the fuck that hand thing is that people do when they don't know what to say but are trying to act cool. They make lots of money though, but that is also boring on its own. The future is so boring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXrLA_P_q2c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXrLA_P_q2c
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  >Can I make a commit for 5000 days in a row Can you, though?
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    It's so easy to shit on someone's work... I personally have set a goal for myself to do at least one commit to my project's repo per day, no matter how minute, even a change in todo.txt counts, and have repeatedly failed to meet the goal, for various reasons. I have good streaks for weeks and months at a time, but 5000 days in a row is fucking impressive in its own right, regardless of the quality. I thought most of the ,,crappy,, pieces given as example in the article to be at minimum thought-provoking and better than I can create, and pretty hilarious in several cases. At 5000 days in a row, they can,t all be winners, but they are from what I,ve seen. I think most of the time millions are paid for art it,s shady as fuck, and I don,t know if this one is any different, but the art holds up imo. GP reeks of envy, which is also normal to experience and a valid feeling to have and express.
throwaway743 6y ago
Where's my outrage?
dmschulman 6y ago
If anyone would like their own full size copy of the work to do their own analysis on, here you go: https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmXkxpwAHCtDXbbZHUwqtFucG1RMS6T87vi1CdvadfL7qA https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmXkxpwAHCtDXbbZHUw...
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
Think its interesting seeing how the algorithms and Twitter feedback loop have affected his work over time. Kinda went from eyecandy to the 3D equivalent of a low level political comics but 3D. Although as someone working in the same sphere the "Everydays" idea has been quite a negative influence on the quality of work you see out there and the work has taken on a lot of similarities.
- stemlord 6y ago
  >the "Everydays" idea has been quite a negative influence on the quality of work you see out there and the work has taken on a lot of similarities. Yeah I agree, it's nice to have a window into the process at first but eventually it's worthless spam on a feed that becomes really grating over time. It becomes tiring to witness every possible permutation of a shader that one person's working on. It starts to all feel like a big homogeneous soup of algorithmic content production just for the sake of the platform's own growth. I forget there's supposed to be a complete, detailed, complex thought in the form of the final piece at the end of the road, usually... which at this rate exists less and less as social media feeds dominate how we experience the web more and more.
breakfastduck 6y ago
This is quite possibly the most uptight, smug and creepily personal critique of a piece of art I've ever seen. It goes so low as to try to paint Beeple as a racist because he had the cheek to... draw a black person? Honestly, the art world is poison. What a horrible article. Criticizes heavily his earliest works being included, which would be absolutely fine only the entire point of the artwork is something is created every day - yet this reviewer seems to insist on reviewing each individual work as if it had been a long term project in its own right. I don't usually like to get personal, but I'm absolutely sure the person who wrote this is an insufferable snob. btw, I'm not saying you cant say his art is bad, they just did it in an incredibly poor way.
HellDunkel 6y ago
I doubt this will be worth billions one day but who knows? Andy Warhol is still around. Seems like a giant middle finger to the art world. The backlash speaks volumes too.
belval 6y ago
I personally gave up on understanding and forming an opinion on modern art because I don't get it. That being said a lot of things from the article (written by an actual critic) seem mostly to be complaining about political things or saying that some of the drawing are low quality. I don't see it. This is 11 years of evolution and development of someone's art, it is cringe because when you don't cherrypick your best work you always end up bad or even cringy but that's also part of the story that this piece tells.
throwaway284534 6y ago
“By posting the results online I’m ‘less’ likely to throw down a big pile of ass-shit,” the artist explains of the impetus behind the daily creative exercise on his website, “even though most of the time I still do because I suck ass.” Whether or not Beeple actually believes his work is bad isn’t the only problem I have with the artist. This kind of two faced self-depreciation is nauseating, especially coming from someone with access to extremely expensive design tools that most only dream of wielding. 3D modeling software like Cinema 4K is as pricey as the name implies. And yet Beeple comes online each day, acting like he’s an amateur, hat in hand, “god I’m such trash!” I understand that art shouldn’t be solely be judged by the medium. It’s just that young artists see this kind of high fidelity output and get the impression that their art must be even worse if this isn’t good enough. IMO the only thing amateur about Beeple is his attitude.
- nonbirithm 6y ago
  I take a different perspective. If my expectations are set too high then I'm practically unable to attempt doing new, challenging things. I can understand that sentiment of trying to be humble, even if screaming to the world that you're "trash" isn't terribly productive. And it's not like I expect someone who's an artist of all people to remain upstanding in all their communications. I'd rather just hope they can keep honing their talents, of whatever subjective skill level.
effnorwood 6y ago
What you think you found is irrelevant. The guy with $69M isn't you.
abstractbarista 6y ago
These are hilarious!
tracerbulletx 6y ago
The fact that the collection is literally a log of daily practice is very upfront. This is his daily sketchbook done in public starting from his very beginning of his journey creating art. Every single one of these was done in a day and are going to be rough ideas. To act all snooty about it is disingenuous and sounds like jealousy.
fallingfrog 6y ago
One of these days I’m going to photocopy my butt, name it “tax shelter” and sell it for a hundred million dollars. Hey, they buy because the price is high, right?
magwa101 6y ago
Art has always been a money laundering vehicle.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ALittleLight 6y ago
I assume that being outrageous must be part of what Beeple and the buyer are going for. To that end, I think the most outrageous thing to do would be for Beeple to make another NFT of the same artwork and sell it as the first time that an artwork has been sold for the second time. When that also sells for several million people will go mad.
- SiempreViernes 6y ago
  Ha! That'd actually be a good performance :D
lambda_obrien 6y ago
Only in 2021 can a man go from art sensation to what appears to be on his way to being cancelled inn like 3 days. I don't care, personally, but man oh man this year isn't gonna be much more normal than last. I actually think it's interesting to see his advances in skill, not bad for effectively a satire artist.
- SyzygistSix 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure his bread and butter has been detailed sci-fi images that were commissioned.
- Jonnax 6y ago
  So any criticism is now cancelling? Art should only get praise?
  - lambda_obrien 6y ago
    What I'm saying is this specific article seemed to be trying to point at the pieces which could be seen as racist or sexist or whatever. I'm saying this is art and saying it sucks is one thing, but this is another kind of takedown, to me. I have no dog in the show, so I don't care personally, but it's interesting that this guy was so revered at first and now he's getting pummeled. I think maybe you just zoomed in on the word cancel, but I didn't even say anything negative about cancel culture, which you seem to want to defend, so don't bother here, I was commenting on the meteoric rise and fall of beeple, not on the act of cancelling or anything. Chill.
Animats 6y ago
Didn't it come out that there was some pre-existing commercial relationship between buyer and seller? Was this a real transaction?
- coderintherye 6y ago
  Yes, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26453970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26453970
- texasbigdata 6y ago
  So if you buy two things from one vendor, where the first time you had a good experience, it’s now fake? That’s like the core crux of SaaS!
  - ghego1 6y ago
    I think that the point is that the price paid for transaction two might not reflect just the value of transaction two, but also part of transaction one. This would imply that the two parties are collaborating to inflate prices. Which in art is not difficult to imagine since both parties have a very strong interest to report inflated prices.
coderintherye 6y ago
In case anyone missed it, the artist was also double-dipping on the sale: https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beeple-art-buyer-and-his-nft-defi-scheme/ https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beepl...
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  The article is baseless speculation, like this: >>The name of this game is “number go up.” This is about pumping B20, so holders and Metapurse can benefit when they go to sell the token—i.e., get more ETH, buy more NFTs, rinse, repeat. First of all, the buyer putting the art up on a digital museum is exactly what you'd expect from someone spending $70 million on an NFT. The author spins it as some scandalous revelation. Similarly, the buyer selling tokenized shares in their art collections is being cynically spun as nothing more than a "number go up" game, which completely discounts the value this business model could provide, in democraticizing art ownership, enabling art to be more readily used as financial collateral to access liquidity, etc.
- fastball 6y ago
  Might be worth noting that Amy Castor seems to have a pretty strong anti-crypto bias in general, though that of course doesn't necessarily mean what she has written here is counter-factual, but she does seem to have an agenda.
  - acdha 6y ago
    She’s a journalist - that job is supposed to involve critical thinking, not regurgitating press releases. If your criticism is that she’s factually correct but not fawning it sounds like she’s doing her job well.
    - fastball 6y ago
      The problem is that I don't know whether or not she's factually correct in this case, that's kinda the issue with journalism. I can't just check some central database of reality to know if what she is saying is straight up true and accurate or completely false or somewhere in between. Even if you could do that, "facts" can be easily presented in a way that is misleading, as I'm sure you are aware. What I have seen is that she has a clear anti-crypto agenda (not just "anti-fraud" as she claims, unless you define all crypto as fraud, in which case sure). So since I don't know the facts myself, I am more skeptical of the narrative she presents than I otherwise would be given her personal bias. Is that not reasonable?
pjc50 6y ago
"We didn't need a preview": the content of the art isn't important. Like most NFTs, it's just a url that you can sign a hash of for dollars. What's more interesting is the allegation that this is "tape painting": sold to an accomplice for the purpose of promoting the NFT "art" market.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hntrader 6y ago
  Where did you hear about this allegation and is it credible
  - tekstar 6y ago
    I think most of the news articles are based on this original reporting: https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beeple-art-buyer-and-his-nft-defi-scheme/ https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beepl...
- masona 6y ago
  In the art world it's a pretty straightforward formula: -Buy out the estate of a 3rd tier artist who once drank a beer with a famous artist -Created slick marketing materials written by an art critic who was paid a lot of money to hold their nose -Place several key pieces up for auction and an accomplice buys them at inflated prices -Market is cornered, established prices are high, nothing left to do but sell to buyers who are too lazy to form a critical opinion and who instead rely on the manufactured signals from steps 1, 2 and 3. -Once all the best pieces are picked through you still have a bunch of inflated junk that you can use as collateral for other nefarious schemes. Source: worked in a gallery for many years.
  - spoonjim 6y ago
    This reads so spot on. Can you give some examples of recent artists who have had hype Manufactured for them in this manner?
cyberge99 6y ago
Long after we’re all dead this work will be reviewed by historians for it’s significance. Mocked by present day critics, reviled by many. Nonetheless a curated work that defined the times that we lived through, in a series of pictures. He’s an Artist. It’s his chosen vector of expression. Leave him be. His work will be discussed long after we’ve become worm farmers.
- tablespoon 6y ago
  > His work will be discussed long after we’ve become worm farmers. Perhaps, but likely as a footnote to the footnote that was NFT mania, not as an artist in his own right.
  - setpatchaddress 6y ago
    I think that was intended as sarcasm
    - tablespoon 6y ago
      > I think that was intended as sarcasm It's really hard to tell with NFTs, sometimes.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  I think this is right. I remember in various art history courses certain pieces were described as causing a huge uproar not only in the art world but within the general public of its era. I’d sit there wondering just how or why, not fully appreciating the context of the time it was made. I think this “piece” if you will follows that. It’s super controversial because of what it claims as fine art - an NFT of crude imagery in meme form valued at ungodly sums of crypto currency during these days when a large part of the population is desperate for stimulus checks. (Talk about the current human condition in the era of hypermodernity!) It’s genius. I could also be blowing smoke up my own ass. I don’t “get it” like I think people 50 years from now will (when the conventional wisdom is it was a radical departure that opened new ground in the stagnant art world - the first hypermodern masterpiece, or whatever the tastemakers of the time decree) but that gives me the advantage, living through it, of seeing this as something completely preposterous, absurd, and “not art!”. The NFT art movement in general makes you think about what art means and as much as other art movements from worlds ago did to the people of that time. The content quality of the imagery hardly matters. Sort of. It’s crude, political, cheap, unaffordable, and outrageously offensive to some. It is us in this time and we hate to see it.
seibelj 6y ago
A baseball card is ink on cardboard. Its intrinsic value is a few pennies at most. The value is what it represents, the story behind it (and the stories we tell each other), the rarity, the brand, and so on. A physical collectible is a conversation piece and only has meaning because some people agree it does. An NFT is no different. The more people talk about the Beeple work, analyze it, critique it, teach it in schools, write about it on websites, the more its legend and cachet will grow. That is why it has value - it represents the same things the baseball card does. Except an NFT can trade and move much quicker, given the internet and its digital nature.
- jbluepolarbear 6y ago
  I think people are just confused. Like, I didn’t know if who Beeple was and after seeing their work I can say it’s pretty offensive. So why is it worth anything? Is it because it’s a great work of art or did somebody with too much money take a gamble on Vaporware?
  - seibelj 6y ago
    Why is this worth $85mil? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprematist_Composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprematist_Composition Honestly looks like a piece of shit to me, something my child could do. Value of art doesn't have to do with skill.
    - UncleMeat 6y ago
      Sure. But usually a piece like this goes for 85m long after the artist has achieved major notoriety in the art community and their work has been a clear influence on later art. In this case the 85m sale was 100 years after the creation of this piece. That may be a stupid reason, but it isn't a circular reason. Beeple, on the other hand, appears to be famous for selling art at ridiculous prices through NFTs.
    - jbluepolarbear 6y ago
      The value of art is dictated by only a few players (really rich people). Generally, expensive art is from an influential artist; specifically, the pieces that were atypical or experimental.
viraptor 6y ago
I'm not sure I get this point of view. We know that famous artists did random rude and badly-satirical drawings for fun. Their dick drawings were contained in some old notebooks and trashed. But I bet someone would buy a preserved notebook of someone semi-famous with 5000 pages of drawings, mostly regardless of contents. This is pretty much the equivalent of that - daily fun which went to the internet bin rather than real one. Some examples are really reaching too: "it’s fun to draw black people" - what is it an example for? What is the article author trying to point out there?
- codingdave 6y ago
  > a preserved notebook of someone semi-famous with 5000 pages of drawings That is the crux of it - will Beeple be semi-famous in 200 years? Doubtful. There isn't anything here that is particularly noteworthy to stand the test of time... the unique difference in this work is its delivery, not its content. (In that sense, the buyers were correct to not care about the content.) It does deserve some recognition for being the first of its kind. But just like the videos of people who took a picture of themselves every day for years were once new and innovative, they are now commonplace... so will works like this become commonplace. So the point is that there is no reason to expect this to appreciate in value and become worth a billion dollars.
- Demonsult 6y ago
  > "it’s fun to draw black people" - what is it an example for? The author is oblivious to the fact that he can't think his way around his pangs of identity guilt. He doesn't realize the mere mention of black people isn't a taboo for most people.
  - tim333 6y ago
    >He doesn't realize the mere mention of black people isn't a taboo for most people. I'd guess he realizes it and that's the point. A lot of his stuff has taboos.
- tablespoon 6y ago
  > I'm not sure I get this point of view. I think that Beeple is basically just a rando-tier DeviantArt/Tumblr artist, and much of his art is cringe to boot. Since someone purportedly paid the equivalent of $69 million in ETH for it, it's noteworthy that there's no there there.
keyle 6y ago
What's the point of this article? Toddler ranting about disliking the beeple style? I follow him everyday and half the stuff he does makes me cringe and that's a good thing. It makes me question the very simple question of what is art, what is taste, why we even care. All in all, beeple is a terrific artist. If you wanted 5000 Mona Lisa, copy paste its image 5000 times.
- Hnrobert42 6y ago
  As one with no information about Beeple or this artwork other than the headline, I found the article informative. I appreciate someone taking the time to find higher resolution individual images, not to mention attempting to identify themes and styles. From the article, Beeple’s work doesn’t do much for me, but nor does most other art. My tastes are unrefined and primitive. But my tastes are completely my own. I am happy for those who get something out of pondering questions like “what is art?” It’s great that you enjoy Beeple. Don’t let this article bum you out.
ReadEvalPost 6y ago
Pure strain ressentiment.
yigitcakar 6y ago
I also read that Beeple has shares of the company which bought his art. And artistic works are valued based on their affect to culture. Beeple has none other than this elaborate NTF marketing scheme. You might want to read this -> https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beeple-art-buyer-and-his-nft-defi-scheme/ https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beepl... and this -> https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2021/03/11/nfts-crypto-grifters-try-to-scam-artists-again/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2021/03/11/nfts-crypto-...
ffggvv 6y ago
the worst part about arguing the worth of things like this is one side has a strong financial/emotional motive to be hostile and disingenuous. so it’s best not to engage what’s clearly a scam. it’s like trying to tell someone who is in an MLM that it’s a pyramid scheme
cwkoss 6y ago
I walked away from this thinking the $69M image was much cooler than I expected it to be. Its like a representation of the artist's whole body of work, ~4000 lower quality sketches progressing into ~1000 in his current style. I feel like this art critic is not in touch with meme culture. Many of the examples contained were quite striking and interesting, don't find drawings of dicks or naked people particularly shocking or objectionable. Heck, I'd say his work is more interesting to look at than bowls of fruit and portraits of historical figures.
- dash2 6y ago
  If your idea of traditional art is "bowls of fruit and historical figures", then I'd respectfully suggest that you may not be hugely in touch with art....
  - cwkoss 6y ago
    Yeah, I think 90% of museum art was made for old dead barons and aristocrats to whom I share little similarity.
    - the_other 6y ago
      And 100% of that stuff takes the piss out of the people it was made for in subtle and clever ways. It's deeper than you think, but you have to read around rather than look at the art to get it.
      - cwkoss 6y ago
        Hmm, that sounds interesting. Could you point me to a good example of art subverting its patron?
- birdyrooster 6y ago
  it's not shocking, it's mediocre renditions of things which were common art during the last 15 years and put together, the sum still really isn't worth more than the parts people are willing to waste untold sums of money to feel sophisticated
jayd16 6y ago
If it makes everyone feel better, they didn't pay almost $70M for the art. The buyer paid almost $70M to post their id, a guid, some metadata and a link to a site neither the buyer or the seller controls. What a world.
- Kiro 6y ago
  Yes, I made a comment explaining how to check this out yourself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26459621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26459621 A Twitter thread explaining how absurd this is: https://twitter.com/jonty/status/1372163423446917122 https://twitter.com/jonty/status/1372163423446917122 There's already URL rot going on: https://twitter.com/CheckMyNFT/status/1372253288863825925 https://twitter.com/CheckMyNFT/status/1372253288863825925
  - Dzugaru 6y ago
    I still don't get why this is a scam, there is a SHA-256 hash of the whole image in that token, complete with timestamp and a buyer signature - the buyer can certainly prove he was first (or Nth) to buy this exact thing anytime he wants (if he doesn't lose his private key ofc). Who cares if some URLs included do rot? It's almost the same idea [0] Galileo used 400 years ago to prove he was first to see Saturn rings by hashing the image description and distributing the hash. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn
    - jayd16 6y ago
      Its $70M to post "first!" Maybe scam isn't the right word but its certainly strange to me.
    - totalZero 6y ago
      How can you compare this Beepis stuff to Galileo being the first human to lay eyes on a closeup of Saturn's rings....
    - bildung 6y ago
      Because that doesn't make the image in question scarcer? I just went to Christie's site and copied it by just viewing the page.
throwawayfeaxcz 6y ago
A small tangent, I don't get NFTs, what's stopping me from creating a new NFT with beeples image, or if there is hashing involved with beeples image and a couple of pixels changed?
- Kiro 6y ago
  Nothing and there's no hashing involved. The token just contains a URL to the hosted image. You can even point it to the image in this article.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > The token just contains a URL to the hosted image. That sounds... just insane. Content under an URL can and does change. URLs themselves are not even under full control of the seller. I could get signing data itself, but signing a pointer? EDIT: but the URL contains an IPFS hash, assuming it's not the mutable kind, maybe this is not completely crazy (or at least wouldn't be, if they included just the hash, without the gateway URL part)? EDIT2: nevermind, I saw your other comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26500542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26500542, which links to a Twitter thread that explains the scam in details.
    - miracle2k 6y ago
      I know it is hard to wrap your head around, but really, the link does not fundamentally matter. Cryptopunks are just a hash of all the images. The whole point of an NFT token is to be a digital signature, essentially. It is just a shared agreement between buyer and seller to value that signature, and as long as we know that it represents the Beeple artwork, then the fact that the technical implementation points to a porn url, who cares - that is just an aide. In fact, the original art could even be lost (as much physical art is). People could still value the signature! Felix Salmon gets it: https://twitter.com/felixsalmon/status/1372242410386944014 https://twitter.com/felixsalmon/status/1372242410386944014
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
hycaria 6y ago
I can’t be the only one who knew about beeple before this. And I enjoy his art.
tryonenow 6y ago
Come on...this is just money laundering...right?
- progre 6y ago
  I chunk of it has to be. One money laundering idea I had a while back was to set up an "App Store", where certain organizations could publish real apps. You could fill it with "Yoga zen sounds", "Daily bible quote" and astrology apps and maybe allow the publishers to generate them by having templates where only the names are changed. They could then "buy" their own apps anonymously and have a legit stream of cash that way. The store would take 0.5% commission. This is obviously a bad idea for all kinds of reasons, and I would never do it, but once I had the idea it's kinda hard to imagine that someone else is not already doing it. Fun to think about non the less. Anyway, this art trading stuff seams way easier.
lerigner 6y ago
If you’re curious about how Beeple works, Corridor Crew invited him to their offices to work on 1 of these 5000 daily productions. https://youtu.be/_ul9jrCXhR4 https://youtu.be/_ul9jrCXhR4
pharmakom 6y ago
the art perfectly captures someone desperately trying to be relevant despite having nothing to say.
- dgellow 6y ago
  That doesn’t really match reality though. He did the vast majority of this work when he wasn’t relevant in any way. It’s not like he became famous in 2007 and continued publishing to milk the cow. For a decade almost nobody cared, then he became a meme artist.
  - arbol 6y ago
    But there's not really anything being said in the art despite adopting the facade of political commentary. I think the parent commenter was correct in this respect.
growt 6y ago
I see it as a type of performance art to put all of your work out there (even the really bad stuff you did as a teenager) and preserving that in a time where you can easily delete stuff online (I know it can't really be deleted but probably nobody would start to dig). I still think the 69M deal was a sham (as described in the other article).
Grustaf 6y ago
Modern “art” is very often offensive, but usually that is seen as a good thing. It’s “irreverent”, it “challenges norms”. I suppose the problem is that this particular hack challenges the wrong norms?
- the_af 6y ago
  I don't see him challenging the norms, so I'm gonna guess "no". It seems to be that his art is a dime a dozen sort of low quality crap. Crap is in itself unsurprising -- most of everything is, see Sturgeon's Law -- but what's surprising is the amount paid for such low quality, low effort crap. No sign of norms being challenged here.
  - Grustaf 6y ago
    Of course it’s low quality, but so is Pussy Riot or any equivalent leftist “art”. Surely the author of the article felt that drawing a “black dude” etc was un-woke?
    - the_af 6y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean by leftist art but, in general, I'm going to disagree with you. I think the author of the article felt the art was generally crap and that the amount paid for it was surprising, a sentiment with which I agree.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  You can find largely equivalent content and messaging in political comics sections of a daily newspaper. What norms is this work challenging?
  - Grustaf 6y ago
    Apparently the author of this article felt that he challenged PC norms.
    - 6y ago
neiman 6y ago
Next up: a review of Mozart first piece from when he was 3 years old. Spoiler alert: it's a stinker showing that Mozart is overrated!
kmlx 6y ago
if anyone’s curious, here’s the exact jpeg that was sold by christie’s (319.2MB): https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmXkxpwAHCtDXbbZHUwqtFucG1RMS6T87vi1CdvadfL7qA https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmXkxpwAHCtDXbbZHUw... they could have at least put up a png ;)
renewiltord 6y ago
Well, obviously the Trump/Clinton work is a reference to the Socialist Fraternal Kiss. Not obvious to the layman but clear to anyone with experience critiquing art. Haha, this is fun. I can see why art critics like doing it.
Gatsky 6y ago
Crypto nouveau riche... somehow worse than the real thing. At least when someone puts pink velour seats in their Bentley they don’t claim it’s a revolution.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
krychu 6y ago
I haven't been following this too closely, but is this whole thing some kind of generalization of the milliondollarpage idea?
nj999999 6y ago
I typically launder large amounts of money through traditional art purchases. I store these assets at freeports throughout the world. Many of my friends do the same. As an older, less tech-savvy gentleman, would you recommend NFT Art as a useful way to launder money? The cut Christie's takes on my 'transactions' is borderline usurious.
- newsclues 6y ago
  Will the existing art money laundering industry move to crypto or will they see it as a threat and have it smashed?
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  This is what anti-crypto LARPing looks like.
- blunte 6y ago
  There is surely more to this "sale" than meets the eye, pardon the pun. Unless someone has billions and wants to just p*ss away money for laughs, there is no legitimate explanation for buying something like this for such a price. It is not an investment in any reasonable sense of the word.
dgellow 6y ago
People seem to say it’s not good art/drawing/rendering, I personally love that kind of punk-ish style. I grew up reading all the graphic novels I could find during the 90s and early 2000s, with a lot of punk-inspired themes, and that’s the same vibe I see here. It’s gross, dark, morbid, cringy, ugly, trashy, and unnecessarily provocative. That’s not for everybody but some of us like that type of stuff. The bernie-monster is fantastic IMHO, and I have nothing against Bernie Sanders.
- stuaxo 6y ago
  It's the fact, he knocks one of these out every day that's great. Watching his workflow, and seeing them get slicker is a part of it too.
gadders 6y ago
I think this is what Glenn Greenwald calls "hall monitor journalism": "A new and rapidly growing journalistic “beat” has arisen over the last several years that can best be described as an unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance. It is half adolescent and half malevolent. Its primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power. Though its epicenter is the largest corporate media outlets, it is the very antithesis of journalism." https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-journalistic-tattletale-and-censorship https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-journalistic-tattletale...

222 points by hx2a 6y ago

First I heard of Beeple was like a year ago, on Corridor Crew: https://youtu.be/_ul9jrCXhR4 https://youtu.be/_ul9jrCXhR4 So when I read about some NFT crypto art selling for 69 million, I was genuinely surprised that it was at least someone I had heard about before. It’s not exactly my cup of tea, but I respect Beeple’s dedication to his art. When I read this article, it felt less a critique of the merits of Beeple’s art, and more like a hit piece on their character. Cherry-picked are examples of past artwork likely to offend somebody, somewhere. In my opinion, art critique isn’t that hard, I even wrote about it here, https://wndr.xyz/posts/9fjM1tOJO7MWX4fYw3AU2Q==/what-s-art-and-what-s-not https://wndr.xyz/posts/9fjM1tOJO7MWX4fYw3AU2Q==/what-s-art-a.... This however is not an analysis of the artwork, but a meta-analysis of the subjects of Beeple’s art. If this qualifies someone a National Art Critic, then it probably is “fancy-dancy elite art homo” thinking. But hey, it got people to click and read their article I guess.

dash2 6y ago
What? No, it's a critique of the art. It points out that the images are unfunny satire, or earnest political right-on-itude, or just trying out photoshop filters. Honestly, they could have just posted the images and that would have been condemnation enough. I mean, good for him for making money, but let's not pretend this is interesting art for anyone over fifteen.
- nailer 6y ago
  > No, it's a critique of the art. It points out that the images are unfunny satire, or earnest political right-on-itude, or just trying out photoshop filters. Humor is a matter of personal taste. Art isn't craft.
  - dash2 6y ago
    Sure! People who forward Facebook posts for their biting political wit will love this stuff, and who am I to disagree?
    - nailer 6y ago
      The artwork doesn't remotely strike me as the kind of thing one would typically see on Facebook. More 4chan, Tumblr, etc.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  I appreciate the art critic posting this, because I wouldn,t have seen the images otherwise. I find them both hilarious and thought-provoking, as I do the writer's snobbish dry analysis.

imaginationra 6y ago

Mediocre artist using cg as a crutch with a gimmick of making an image everyday- yeah that's called "work" and you are supposed to work everyday- I don't see what the big deal is. Don't we all work everyday? Can I make a commit for 5000 days in a row then sell the text as an NFT? Probably not as I couldn't gain 2 million InstaZuck followers by creating commits with "trump sucks" and "whoa the future is crazy maaaan" as the description everyday.... or could I? All the "political" art is lame. That's all future dustbin stuff. It panders to plebs who don't understand how the world really works to pay the bills, boring. There isn't even any layers of abstraction like some of the animations by Svankmajer have, its just topical Murican dumb shit. It's like bro art. You know those dudes... Dude's who have "cool tattoo's" and pride themselves on the kind of micro-brew beer they drink and smoke hand rolled cigars cut with Damascus steel or some shit- those dudes like that kind of art- its embarrassing. Also the Beeple dude owes the Cinema 4d and Octane render programmers some money- without their engineering his "art" would have remained like those lousy drawings. If 5000 of those drawings is the requirement for making 70 million all the ten year olds out there are going to be rich. I really like Ethereum too- makes me feel dirty when I interact with the chain now. We should ask Lord Vitalik to do a hard fork so this shitty art NFT thing never happened. They can have a new fork for the crappy art- Pabst Blue Eth. None of his art says anything other than "look at me", but then again he's a "designer". Graphic designers/Mograph artists have nothing to say other than "look at me" They are the narcissists of the art world. They are soulless. If they had souls, and had something important to say they would make full length narrative works but they don't. They just make stupid faces and do the "hang loose" hands or whatever the fuck that hand thing is that people do when they don't know what to say but are trying to act cool. They make lots of money though, but that is also boring on its own. The future is so boring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXrLA_P_q2c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXrLA_P_q2c

forgotmypw17 6y ago
>Can I make a commit for 5000 days in a row Can you, though?
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  It's so easy to shit on someone's work... I personally have set a goal for myself to do at least one commit to my project's repo per day, no matter how minute, even a change in todo.txt counts, and have repeatedly failed to meet the goal, for various reasons. I have good streaks for weeks and months at a time, but 5000 days in a row is fucking impressive in its own right, regardless of the quality. I thought most of the ,,crappy,, pieces given as example in the article to be at minimum thought-provoking and better than I can create, and pretty hilarious in several cases. At 5000 days in a row, they can,t all be winners, but they are from what I,ve seen. I think most of the time millions are paid for art it,s shady as fuck, and I don,t know if this one is any different, but the art holds up imo. GP reeks of envy, which is also normal to experience and a valid feeling to have and express.

throwaway743 6y ago

Where's my outrage?

dmschulman 6y ago

If anyone would like their own full size copy of the work to do their own analysis on, here you go: https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmXkxpwAHCtDXbbZHUwqtFucG1RMS6T87vi1CdvadfL7qA https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmXkxpwAHCtDXbbZHUw...

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

Think its interesting seeing how the algorithms and Twitter feedback loop have affected his work over time. Kinda went from eyecandy to the 3D equivalent of a low level political comics but 3D. Although as someone working in the same sphere the "Everydays" idea has been quite a negative influence on the quality of work you see out there and the work has taken on a lot of similarities.

stemlord 6y ago
>the "Everydays" idea has been quite a negative influence on the quality of work you see out there and the work has taken on a lot of similarities. Yeah I agree, it's nice to have a window into the process at first but eventually it's worthless spam on a feed that becomes really grating over time. It becomes tiring to witness every possible permutation of a shader that one person's working on. It starts to all feel like a big homogeneous soup of algorithmic content production just for the sake of the platform's own growth. I forget there's supposed to be a complete, detailed, complex thought in the form of the final piece at the end of the road, usually... which at this rate exists less and less as social media feeds dominate how we experience the web more and more.

breakfastduck 6y ago

This is quite possibly the most uptight, smug and creepily personal critique of a piece of art I've ever seen. It goes so low as to try to paint Beeple as a racist because he had the cheek to... draw a black person? Honestly, the art world is poison. What a horrible article. Criticizes heavily his earliest works being included, which would be absolutely fine only the entire point of the artwork is something is created every day - yet this reviewer seems to insist on reviewing each individual work as if it had been a long term project in its own right. I don't usually like to get personal, but I'm absolutely sure the person who wrote this is an insufferable snob. btw, I'm not saying you cant say his art is bad, they just did it in an incredibly poor way.

HellDunkel 6y ago

I doubt this will be worth billions one day but who knows? Andy Warhol is still around. Seems like a giant middle finger to the art world. The backlash speaks volumes too.

belval 6y ago

I personally gave up on understanding and forming an opinion on modern art because I don't get it. That being said a lot of things from the article (written by an actual critic) seem mostly to be complaining about political things or saying that some of the drawing are low quality. I don't see it. This is 11 years of evolution and development of someone's art, it is cringe because when you don't cherrypick your best work you always end up bad or even cringy but that's also part of the story that this piece tells.

throwaway284534 6y ago

“By posting the results online I’m ‘less’ likely to throw down a big pile of ass-shit,” the artist explains of the impetus behind the daily creative exercise on his website, “even though most of the time I still do because I suck ass.” Whether or not Beeple actually believes his work is bad isn’t the only problem I have with the artist. This kind of two faced self-depreciation is nauseating, especially coming from someone with access to extremely expensive design tools that most only dream of wielding. 3D modeling software like Cinema 4K is as pricey as the name implies. And yet Beeple comes online each day, acting like he’s an amateur, hat in hand, “god I’m such trash!” I understand that art shouldn’t be solely be judged by the medium. It’s just that young artists see this kind of high fidelity output and get the impression that their art must be even worse if this isn’t good enough. IMO the only thing amateur about Beeple is his attitude.

nonbirithm 6y ago
I take a different perspective. If my expectations are set too high then I'm practically unable to attempt doing new, challenging things. I can understand that sentiment of trying to be humble, even if screaming to the world that you're "trash" isn't terribly productive. And it's not like I expect someone who's an artist of all people to remain upstanding in all their communications. I'd rather just hope they can keep honing their talents, of whatever subjective skill level.

effnorwood 6y ago

What you think you found is irrelevant. The guy with $69M isn't you.

abstractbarista 6y ago

These are hilarious!

tracerbulletx 6y ago

The fact that the collection is literally a log of daily practice is very upfront. This is his daily sketchbook done in public starting from his very beginning of his journey creating art. Every single one of these was done in a day and are going to be rough ideas. To act all snooty about it is disingenuous and sounds like jealousy.

fallingfrog 6y ago

One of these days I’m going to photocopy my butt, name it “tax shelter” and sell it for a hundred million dollars. Hey, they buy because the price is high, right?

magwa101 6y ago

Art has always been a money laundering vehicle.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ALittleLight 6y ago

I assume that being outrageous must be part of what Beeple and the buyer are going for. To that end, I think the most outrageous thing to do would be for Beeple to make another NFT of the same artwork and sell it as the first time that an artwork has been sold for the second time. When that also sells for several million people will go mad.

SiempreViernes 6y ago
Ha! That'd actually be a good performance :D

lambda_obrien 6y ago

Only in 2021 can a man go from art sensation to what appears to be on his way to being cancelled inn like 3 days. I don't care, personally, but man oh man this year isn't gonna be much more normal than last. I actually think it's interesting to see his advances in skill, not bad for effectively a satire artist.

SyzygistSix 6y ago
I'm pretty sure his bread and butter has been detailed sci-fi images that were commissioned.
Jonnax 6y ago
So any criticism is now cancelling? Art should only get praise?
- lambda_obrien 6y ago
  What I'm saying is this specific article seemed to be trying to point at the pieces which could be seen as racist or sexist or whatever. I'm saying this is art and saying it sucks is one thing, but this is another kind of takedown, to me. I have no dog in the show, so I don't care personally, but it's interesting that this guy was so revered at first and now he's getting pummeled. I think maybe you just zoomed in on the word cancel, but I didn't even say anything negative about cancel culture, which you seem to want to defend, so don't bother here, I was commenting on the meteoric rise and fall of beeple, not on the act of cancelling or anything. Chill.

Animats 6y ago

Didn't it come out that there was some pre-existing commercial relationship between buyer and seller? Was this a real transaction?

coderintherye 6y ago
Yes, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26453970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26453970
texasbigdata 6y ago
So if you buy two things from one vendor, where the first time you had a good experience, it’s now fake? That’s like the core crux of SaaS!
- ghego1 6y ago
  I think that the point is that the price paid for transaction two might not reflect just the value of transaction two, but also part of transaction one. This would imply that the two parties are collaborating to inflate prices. Which in art is not difficult to imagine since both parties have a very strong interest to report inflated prices.

coderintherye 6y ago

In case anyone missed it, the artist was also double-dipping on the sale: https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beeple-art-buyer-and-his-nft-defi-scheme/ https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beepl...

CryptoPunk 6y ago
The article is baseless speculation, like this: >>The name of this game is “number go up.” This is about pumping B20, so holders and Metapurse can benefit when they go to sell the token—i.e., get more ETH, buy more NFTs, rinse, repeat. First of all, the buyer putting the art up on a digital museum is exactly what you'd expect from someone spending $70 million on an NFT. The author spins it as some scandalous revelation. Similarly, the buyer selling tokenized shares in their art collections is being cynically spun as nothing more than a "number go up" game, which completely discounts the value this business model could provide, in democraticizing art ownership, enabling art to be more readily used as financial collateral to access liquidity, etc.
fastball 6y ago
Might be worth noting that Amy Castor seems to have a pretty strong anti-crypto bias in general, though that of course doesn't necessarily mean what she has written here is counter-factual, but she does seem to have an agenda.
- acdha 6y ago
  She’s a journalist - that job is supposed to involve critical thinking, not regurgitating press releases. If your criticism is that she’s factually correct but not fawning it sounds like she’s doing her job well.
  - fastball 6y ago
    The problem is that I don't know whether or not she's factually correct in this case, that's kinda the issue with journalism. I can't just check some central database of reality to know if what she is saying is straight up true and accurate or completely false or somewhere in between. Even if you could do that, "facts" can be easily presented in a way that is misleading, as I'm sure you are aware. What I have seen is that she has a clear anti-crypto agenda (not just "anti-fraud" as she claims, unless you define all crypto as fraud, in which case sure). So since I don't know the facts myself, I am more skeptical of the narrative she presents than I otherwise would be given her personal bias. Is that not reasonable?

pjc50 6y ago

"We didn't need a preview": the content of the art isn't important. Like most NFTs, it's just a url that you can sign a hash of for dollars. What's more interesting is the allegation that this is "tape painting": sold to an accomplice for the purpose of promoting the NFT "art" market.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hntrader 6y ago
Where did you hear about this allegation and is it credible
- tekstar 6y ago
  I think most of the news articles are based on this original reporting: https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beeple-art-buyer-and-his-nft-defi-scheme/ https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beepl...
masona 6y ago
In the art world it's a pretty straightforward formula: -Buy out the estate of a 3rd tier artist who once drank a beer with a famous artist -Created slick marketing materials written by an art critic who was paid a lot of money to hold their nose -Place several key pieces up for auction and an accomplice buys them at inflated prices -Market is cornered, established prices are high, nothing left to do but sell to buyers who are too lazy to form a critical opinion and who instead rely on the manufactured signals from steps 1, 2 and 3. -Once all the best pieces are picked through you still have a bunch of inflated junk that you can use as collateral for other nefarious schemes. Source: worked in a gallery for many years.
- spoonjim 6y ago
  This reads so spot on. Can you give some examples of recent artists who have had hype Manufactured for them in this manner?

cyberge99 6y ago

Long after we’re all dead this work will be reviewed by historians for it’s significance. Mocked by present day critics, reviled by many. Nonetheless a curated work that defined the times that we lived through, in a series of pictures. He’s an Artist. It’s his chosen vector of expression. Leave him be. His work will be discussed long after we’ve become worm farmers.

tablespoon 6y ago
> His work will be discussed long after we’ve become worm farmers. Perhaps, but likely as a footnote to the footnote that was NFT mania, not as an artist in his own right.
- setpatchaddress 6y ago
  I think that was intended as sarcasm
  - tablespoon 6y ago
    > I think that was intended as sarcasm It's really hard to tell with NFTs, sometimes.
nemo44x 6y ago
I think this is right. I remember in various art history courses certain pieces were described as causing a huge uproar not only in the art world but within the general public of its era. I’d sit there wondering just how or why, not fully appreciating the context of the time it was made. I think this “piece” if you will follows that. It’s super controversial because of what it claims as fine art - an NFT of crude imagery in meme form valued at ungodly sums of crypto currency during these days when a large part of the population is desperate for stimulus checks. (Talk about the current human condition in the era of hypermodernity!) It’s genius. I could also be blowing smoke up my own ass. I don’t “get it” like I think people 50 years from now will (when the conventional wisdom is it was a radical departure that opened new ground in the stagnant art world - the first hypermodern masterpiece, or whatever the tastemakers of the time decree) but that gives me the advantage, living through it, of seeing this as something completely preposterous, absurd, and “not art!”. The NFT art movement in general makes you think about what art means and as much as other art movements from worlds ago did to the people of that time. The content quality of the imagery hardly matters. Sort of. It’s crude, political, cheap, unaffordable, and outrageously offensive to some. It is us in this time and we hate to see it.

seibelj 6y ago

A baseball card is ink on cardboard. Its intrinsic value is a few pennies at most. The value is what it represents, the story behind it (and the stories we tell each other), the rarity, the brand, and so on. A physical collectible is a conversation piece and only has meaning because some people agree it does. An NFT is no different. The more people talk about the Beeple work, analyze it, critique it, teach it in schools, write about it on websites, the more its legend and cachet will grow. That is why it has value - it represents the same things the baseball card does. Except an NFT can trade and move much quicker, given the internet and its digital nature.

jbluepolarbear 6y ago
I think people are just confused. Like, I didn’t know if who Beeple was and after seeing their work I can say it’s pretty offensive. So why is it worth anything? Is it because it’s a great work of art or did somebody with too much money take a gamble on Vaporware?
- seibelj 6y ago
  Why is this worth $85mil? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprematist_Composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprematist_Composition Honestly looks like a piece of shit to me, something my child could do. Value of art doesn't have to do with skill.
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    Sure. But usually a piece like this goes for 85m long after the artist has achieved major notoriety in the art community and their work has been a clear influence on later art. In this case the 85m sale was 100 years after the creation of this piece. That may be a stupid reason, but it isn't a circular reason. Beeple, on the other hand, appears to be famous for selling art at ridiculous prices through NFTs.
  - jbluepolarbear 6y ago
    The value of art is dictated by only a few players (really rich people). Generally, expensive art is from an influential artist; specifically, the pieces that were atypical or experimental.

viraptor 6y ago

I'm not sure I get this point of view. We know that famous artists did random rude and badly-satirical drawings for fun. Their dick drawings were contained in some old notebooks and trashed. But I bet someone would buy a preserved notebook of someone semi-famous with 5000 pages of drawings, mostly regardless of contents. This is pretty much the equivalent of that - daily fun which went to the internet bin rather than real one. Some examples are really reaching too: "it’s fun to draw black people" - what is it an example for? What is the article author trying to point out there?

codingdave 6y ago
> a preserved notebook of someone semi-famous with 5000 pages of drawings That is the crux of it - will Beeple be semi-famous in 200 years? Doubtful. There isn't anything here that is particularly noteworthy to stand the test of time... the unique difference in this work is its delivery, not its content. (In that sense, the buyers were correct to not care about the content.) It does deserve some recognition for being the first of its kind. But just like the videos of people who took a picture of themselves every day for years were once new and innovative, they are now commonplace... so will works like this become commonplace. So the point is that there is no reason to expect this to appreciate in value and become worth a billion dollars.
Demonsult 6y ago
> "it’s fun to draw black people" - what is it an example for? The author is oblivious to the fact that he can't think his way around his pangs of identity guilt. He doesn't realize the mere mention of black people isn't a taboo for most people.
- tim333 6y ago
  >He doesn't realize the mere mention of black people isn't a taboo for most people. I'd guess he realizes it and that's the point. A lot of his stuff has taboos.
tablespoon 6y ago
> I'm not sure I get this point of view. I think that Beeple is basically just a rando-tier DeviantArt/Tumblr artist, and much of his art is cringe to boot. Since someone purportedly paid the equivalent of $69 million in ETH for it, it's noteworthy that there's no there there.

keyle 6y ago

What's the point of this article? Toddler ranting about disliking the beeple style? I follow him everyday and half the stuff he does makes me cringe and that's a good thing. It makes me question the very simple question of what is art, what is taste, why we even care. All in all, beeple is a terrific artist. If you wanted 5000 Mona Lisa, copy paste its image 5000 times.

Hnrobert42 6y ago
As one with no information about Beeple or this artwork other than the headline, I found the article informative. I appreciate someone taking the time to find higher resolution individual images, not to mention attempting to identify themes and styles. From the article, Beeple’s work doesn’t do much for me, but nor does most other art. My tastes are unrefined and primitive. But my tastes are completely my own. I am happy for those who get something out of pondering questions like “what is art?” It’s great that you enjoy Beeple. Don’t let this article bum you out.

ReadEvalPost 6y ago

Pure strain ressentiment.

yigitcakar 6y ago

I also read that Beeple has shares of the company which bought his art. And artistic works are valued based on their affect to culture. Beeple has none other than this elaborate NTF marketing scheme. You might want to read this -> https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beeple-art-buyer-and-his-nft-defi-scheme/ https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beepl... and this -> https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2021/03/11/nfts-crypto-grifters-try-to-scam-artists-again/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2021/03/11/nfts-crypto-...

ffggvv 6y ago

the worst part about arguing the worth of things like this is one side has a strong financial/emotional motive to be hostile and disingenuous. so it’s best not to engage what’s clearly a scam. it’s like trying to tell someone who is in an MLM that it’s a pyramid scheme

cwkoss 6y ago

I walked away from this thinking the $69M image was much cooler than I expected it to be. Its like a representation of the artist's whole body of work, ~4000 lower quality sketches progressing into ~1000 in his current style. I feel like this art critic is not in touch with meme culture. Many of the examples contained were quite striking and interesting, don't find drawings of dicks or naked people particularly shocking or objectionable. Heck, I'd say his work is more interesting to look at than bowls of fruit and portraits of historical figures.

dash2 6y ago
If your idea of traditional art is "bowls of fruit and historical figures", then I'd respectfully suggest that you may not be hugely in touch with art....
- cwkoss 6y ago
  Yeah, I think 90% of museum art was made for old dead barons and aristocrats to whom I share little similarity.
  - the_other 6y ago
    And 100% of that stuff takes the piss out of the people it was made for in subtle and clever ways. It's deeper than you think, but you have to read around rather than look at the art to get it.
    - cwkoss 6y ago
      Hmm, that sounds interesting. Could you point me to a good example of art subverting its patron?
birdyrooster 6y ago
it's not shocking, it's mediocre renditions of things which were common art during the last 15 years and put together, the sum still really isn't worth more than the parts people are willing to waste untold sums of money to feel sophisticated

jayd16 6y ago

If it makes everyone feel better, they didn't pay almost $70M for the art. The buyer paid almost $70M to post their id, a guid, some metadata and a link to a site neither the buyer or the seller controls. What a world.

Kiro 6y ago
Yes, I made a comment explaining how to check this out yourself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26459621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26459621 A Twitter thread explaining how absurd this is: https://twitter.com/jonty/status/1372163423446917122 https://twitter.com/jonty/status/1372163423446917122 There's already URL rot going on: https://twitter.com/CheckMyNFT/status/1372253288863825925 https://twitter.com/CheckMyNFT/status/1372253288863825925
- Dzugaru 6y ago
  I still don't get why this is a scam, there is a SHA-256 hash of the whole image in that token, complete with timestamp and a buyer signature - the buyer can certainly prove he was first (or Nth) to buy this exact thing anytime he wants (if he doesn't lose his private key ofc). Who cares if some URLs included do rot? It's almost the same idea [0] Galileo used 400 years ago to prove he was first to see Saturn rings by hashing the image description and distributing the hash. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn
  - jayd16 6y ago
    Its $70M to post "first!" Maybe scam isn't the right word but its certainly strange to me.
  - totalZero 6y ago
    How can you compare this Beepis stuff to Galileo being the first human to lay eyes on a closeup of Saturn's rings....
  - bildung 6y ago
    Because that doesn't make the image in question scarcer? I just went to Christie's site and copied it by just viewing the page.

throwawayfeaxcz 6y ago

A small tangent, I don't get NFTs, what's stopping me from creating a new NFT with beeples image, or if there is hashing involved with beeples image and a couple of pixels changed?

Kiro 6y ago
Nothing and there's no hashing involved. The token just contains a URL to the hosted image. You can even point it to the image in this article.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > The token just contains a URL to the hosted image. That sounds... just insane. Content under an URL can and does change. URLs themselves are not even under full control of the seller. I could get signing data itself, but signing a pointer? EDIT: but the URL contains an IPFS hash, assuming it's not the mutable kind, maybe this is not completely crazy (or at least wouldn't be, if they included just the hash, without the gateway URL part)? EDIT2: nevermind, I saw your other comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26500542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26500542, which links to a Twitter thread that explains the scam in details.
  - miracle2k 6y ago
    I know it is hard to wrap your head around, but really, the link does not fundamentally matter. Cryptopunks are just a hash of all the images. The whole point of an NFT token is to be a digital signature, essentially. It is just a shared agreement between buyer and seller to value that signature, and as long as we know that it represents the Beeple artwork, then the fact that the technical implementation points to a porn url, who cares - that is just an aide. In fact, the original art could even be lost (as much physical art is). People could still value the signature! Felix Salmon gets it: https://twitter.com/felixsalmon/status/1372242410386944014 https://twitter.com/felixsalmon/status/1372242410386944014
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago

hycaria 6y ago

I can’t be the only one who knew about beeple before this. And I enjoy his art.

tryonenow 6y ago

Come on...this is just money laundering...right?

progre 6y ago
I chunk of it has to be. One money laundering idea I had a while back was to set up an "App Store", where certain organizations could publish real apps. You could fill it with "Yoga zen sounds", "Daily bible quote" and astrology apps and maybe allow the publishers to generate them by having templates where only the names are changed. They could then "buy" their own apps anonymously and have a legit stream of cash that way. The store would take 0.5% commission. This is obviously a bad idea for all kinds of reasons, and I would never do it, but once I had the idea it's kinda hard to imagine that someone else is not already doing it. Fun to think about non the less. Anyway, this art trading stuff seams way easier.

lerigner 6y ago

If you’re curious about how Beeple works, Corridor Crew invited him to their offices to work on 1 of these 5000 daily productions. https://youtu.be/_ul9jrCXhR4 https://youtu.be/_ul9jrCXhR4

pharmakom 6y ago

the art perfectly captures someone desperately trying to be relevant despite having nothing to say.

dgellow 6y ago
That doesn’t really match reality though. He did the vast majority of this work when he wasn’t relevant in any way. It’s not like he became famous in 2007 and continued publishing to milk the cow. For a decade almost nobody cared, then he became a meme artist.
- arbol 6y ago
  But there's not really anything being said in the art despite adopting the facade of political commentary. I think the parent commenter was correct in this respect.

growt 6y ago

I see it as a type of performance art to put all of your work out there (even the really bad stuff you did as a teenager) and preserving that in a time where you can easily delete stuff online (I know it can't really be deleted but probably nobody would start to dig). I still think the 69M deal was a sham (as described in the other article).

Grustaf 6y ago

Modern “art” is very often offensive, but usually that is seen as a good thing. It’s “irreverent”, it “challenges norms”. I suppose the problem is that this particular hack challenges the wrong norms?

the_af 6y ago
I don't see him challenging the norms, so I'm gonna guess "no". It seems to be that his art is a dime a dozen sort of low quality crap. Crap is in itself unsurprising -- most of everything is, see Sturgeon's Law -- but what's surprising is the amount paid for such low quality, low effort crap. No sign of norms being challenged here.
- Grustaf 6y ago
  Of course it’s low quality, but so is Pussy Riot or any equivalent leftist “art”. Surely the author of the article felt that drawing a “black dude” etc was un-woke?
  - the_af 6y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by leftist art but, in general, I'm going to disagree with you. I think the author of the article felt the art was generally crap and that the amount paid for it was surprising, a sentiment with which I agree.
UncleMeat 6y ago
You can find largely equivalent content and messaging in political comics sections of a daily newspaper. What norms is this work challenging?
- Grustaf 6y ago
  Apparently the author of this article felt that he challenged PC norms.
  - 6y ago

neiman 6y ago

Next up: a review of Mozart first piece from when he was 3 years old. Spoiler alert: it's a stinker showing that Mozart is overrated!

kmlx 6y ago

if anyone’s curious, here’s the exact jpeg that was sold by christie’s (319.2MB): https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmXkxpwAHCtDXbbZHUwqtFucG1RMS6T87vi1CdvadfL7qA https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmXkxpwAHCtDXbbZHUw... they could have at least put up a png ;)

renewiltord 6y ago

Well, obviously the Trump/Clinton work is a reference to the Socialist Fraternal Kiss. Not obvious to the layman but clear to anyone with experience critiquing art. Haha, this is fun. I can see why art critics like doing it.

Gatsky 6y ago

Crypto nouveau riche... somehow worse than the real thing. At least when someone puts pink velour seats in their Bentley they don’t claim it’s a revolution.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

krychu 6y ago

I haven't been following this too closely, but is this whole thing some kind of generalization of the milliondollarpage idea?

nj999999 6y ago

I typically launder large amounts of money through traditional art purchases. I store these assets at freeports throughout the world. Many of my friends do the same. As an older, less tech-savvy gentleman, would you recommend NFT Art as a useful way to launder money? The cut Christie's takes on my 'transactions' is borderline usurious.

newsclues 6y ago
Will the existing art money laundering industry move to crypto or will they see it as a threat and have it smashed?
CryptoPunk 6y ago
This is what anti-crypto LARPing looks like.
blunte 6y ago
There is surely more to this "sale" than meets the eye, pardon the pun. Unless someone has billions and wants to just p*ss away money for laughs, there is no legitimate explanation for buying something like this for such a price. It is not an investment in any reasonable sense of the word.

dgellow 6y ago

People seem to say it’s not good art/drawing/rendering, I personally love that kind of punk-ish style. I grew up reading all the graphic novels I could find during the 90s and early 2000s, with a lot of punk-inspired themes, and that’s the same vibe I see here. It’s gross, dark, morbid, cringy, ugly, trashy, and unnecessarily provocative. That’s not for everybody but some of us like that type of stuff. The bernie-monster is fantastic IMHO, and I have nothing against Bernie Sanders.

stuaxo 6y ago
It's the fact, he knocks one of these out every day that's great. Watching his workflow, and seeing them get slicker is a part of it too.

gadders 6y ago

I think this is what Glenn Greenwald calls "hall monitor journalism": "A new and rapidly growing journalistic “beat” has arisen over the last several years that can best be described as an unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance. It is half adolescent and half malevolent. Its primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power. Though its epicenter is the largest corporate media outlets, it is the very antithesis of journalism." https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-journalistic-tattletale-and-censorship https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-journalistic-tattletale...