Live data from Hacker News

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

news.artnet.com

71–80 of 271 posts

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

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the article author trying to point out there? That the artist is a bit dim, I should think.

Certainly. You can tell based on the complete lack of success and following they've had, plus some amateur / shitty work they did in the past.

Side note: in this case, ample following does not necessarily imply art value.

It’s easy to get stuck in wanting to create but fearing your art will not be as good as what pro artists produce, so you procrastinate on it forever. Folks start dailies (beeple is far from the only one) to force themselves to improve quality through sheer quantity. Other folks follow them to get inspired, and a major component of that is seeing that what a dailies guy makes is, to put it bluntly, not that good and you can picture yourself making something even better.

So, someone posts a daily -> people realize it’s not necessarily so great in absolute terms, but still they comment good things and encourage the artist -> people see that a mediocre work gets positive comments and feel safer creating and publishing something of their own, eventually perpetuating the loop.

As art communities grow, so do follower/like counts, and platform’s algorithms pick up on that and start promoting these to non-artists from the outside who can get mixed up in this mini-bubble: “who’s that with so many followers? I’ll join in, with that number of likes their artwork must be good.”

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

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Cringe doesn't mean bad - I would say 90% of Jim'll paint it is cringe and awesome https://jimllpaintit.tumblr.com/ There are different kinds of cringe though. Also, Jim'll paint it definitely looks like he's more talented than Beeple. > And having 5000 daily pieces is art by itself. Quantity over quality?

> Quantity over quality?

Isn't focusing on quantity the only reliable way to improve quality? See also, the usual Ira Glass quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/309485-nobody-tells-this-to....

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

#73
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.

> 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.

That's literally how the non-digital art market works, as well.

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

#76
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The critique is calling the art bad and sometimes mysoginistic. It is not, in any way, calling for the artist to be canceled. And yes, art can be racist or misogynistic or problematic in other ways. There's nothing wrong with calling it that. Or do you think it's cancel culture to call "Birth of a Nation" racist?

> It is not, in any way, calling for the artist to be canceled. Not explicitly, no. But it seems to me to follow the well known pattern of "hey, look, I've found something damning buried among X's old stuff". Yes, art can be racist, it's just not the metre you use to judge it.

> look, I've found something damning buried among X's old stuff

Since this is specifically an auction of "old stuff" looking through it makes sense. And while the author is very critical of the work, the most significant criticism isn't that it's not PC. The article mostly complains that most of the art is shallow and won't age well.

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

#77
post #59

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?

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.

> 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, which links to a Twitter thread that explains the scam in details.

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

#78
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Being 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.

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.

It's only now that somehow people found a way to make money from all these 3D renderings that the general public pays attention.

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

#80
post #76
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not, in any way, calling for the artist to be canceled. Not explicitly, no. But it seems to me to follow the well known pattern of "hey, look, I've found something damning buried among X's old stuff". Yes, art can be racist, it's just not the metre you use to judge it.

> look, I've found something damning buried among X's old stuff Since this is specifically an auction of "old stuff" looking through it makes sense. And while the author is very critical of the work, the most significant criticism isn't that it's not PC. The article mostly complains that most of the art is shallow and won't age well.

Please re-read:

"We’ve passed through a racial uprising and a reckoning with sexism, and the cultural project of the moment is… innovating new ways to worship decade-old, BroBible-level brain farts? During a time of immiseration, investors are competing to throw tens of millions of dollars… at this?

These are the questions that go through my head. But that’s probably just “fancy-dancy elite art homo” thinking, right?"

Post reply on HN