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

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

#41
post #37
post #9

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…

> What is the article author trying to point out there? That the artist is not PC enough, so his art must be valueless and he should probably be cancelled.

So any critique now is cancel culture?

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

#42
post #5

"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]

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

#43

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.

So any criticism is now cancelling?

Art should only get praise?

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

#44
post #34

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 shock…

What you said may be true, but pop art that just regurgitates the standard cast of evening news characters (US presidents and presidential candidates and the royal family) usually, even if super well executed, comes off as low effort and uncreative. It’s the visual equivalent of a comic making jokes about airline food and the opposite sex.

None of the items highlighted by this article break that stereotype.

You'd have to have some serious Giger-level shit to make a digital painting involving H. Clinton and Trump remotely interesting in 2021. This is... not that.

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

#46
post #41
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the article author trying to point out there? That the artist is not PC enough, so his art must be valueless and he should probably be cancelled.

So any critique now is cancel culture?

This critique is clearly singling out a few of the 5000 images for lack of adherence to the current standard of PC. The headline is in line with this- who does seriously think that art should be "pretty"? What "is not so pretty" is supposed to mean, other than that there's some stuff in it we should disapprove?

Asking art- good or bad- to be politically correct is ridiculous; and anyway the "artwork" is a composition, not the sum of the individual images.

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

#47
post #9

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…

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 do…

They'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.

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

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Cringe doesn't mean bad - I would say 90% of Jim'll paint it is cringe and awesome https://jimllpaintit.tumblr.com/ And having 5000 daily pieces is art by itself.

This is a great example showing what a coherent, relevant corpus of pop culture art is. Not Beeple’s.

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

#49
post #43

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.

So any criticism is now cancelling? Art should only get praise?

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.

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

#50

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.

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.

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