On the Basquiat NFT auction...
The headline itself is a lot to process. While Jean-Michel Basquiat’s body of work was never really my vibe, this punctuates a lot of my skepticism that NFTs are as “great for artists” as they have been touted…at least in their current application.
I’ve posted about NFTs here previously, but I really had to take a moment to sit with this.
Of course, its always a possibility when someone purchases a piece of artwork that it may end up destroyed, either by intent or through negligence. That’s just the nature of the beast, so that option is literally always there.
To see that option literally brandished as a selling point so brazenly, though…that’s a little unsettling. I may not speak for every single artist ever but I feel like the overwhelming majority of them, in some capacity, are working to create things that will long outlive their physical bodies.
NFTs don’t really provide that in the same sense. They are entirely dependent on the business that maintains the records referenced in the blockchain to stay in business. Just the prospect of marketing the destruction of an original, irreplaceable artwork on the promise of an ephemeral novelty like NFT art just seems grossly disrespectful to the legacy of any artist, but particularly an artist like Basquiat who had achieved acclaim and fortune in his lifetime.
It at least made some sense for its novel approach to digital art, but to me this just feels crass and opportunistic. I sincerely hope that the either this sale is not allowed to proceed, or that the purchaser has the sense about them to keep the original work intact and not destroy it for the fleeting novelty of a tech fad.