Tag Archives: blockchain

Art + Pandemic = Profit

written by : Maurice Cardinal

Wait. What?

Some artists and fine art institutions are doing what …during the pandemic?

Really?

International Artist Day is celebrated on October 25th each year as an homage to Pablo Picasso on his birthday – a radical thinker who dramatically changed how people considered modern art in the early part of the 20th century.

Picasso, after the liberation of France in 1944, an event similarly as traumatic as our pandemic, said, “I didn’t paint the war, but there’s no doubt the war was in my pictures.”

The same will be said of art and the Coronavirus.

Mid-pandemic, digital art is now taking us into another cubic dimension, and introducing collectors to a new experience that artists only dreamt of a few years ago, but can now deliver.

Analog solutions still abound of course, and always will. No one would be foolish enough to argue otherwise, however, after being closed for almost six months, The Metropolitan Museum of Art re-opened at the end of August to small and exuberant crowds, and also to a potential revenue-loss of $150 million. Denizens of the art world are a creative bunch, so it didn’t take long to figure out that if they had to, museums could sell a small quantity of their overabundance of art to stay solvent. Analog art is entrenched in our psyches and won’t go away, especially when you consider that it’s an exclusive platform for the wealthy to buy and sell trading cards that have been very cleverly boosted to stratospheric prices. Fine art pieces can command multimillions more than their intrinsic worth. Contemporary art though, is much different, and relatable to people who actually love the art part, more than the investment. 

Selling select pieces from a museum’s collection is a practical solution, especially considering that many museums and galleries have closed shop – permanently. Laura Lott, President and CEO of the American Alliance of Museums, said that “about one third of the museums in the U.S. were operating at a loss before the pandemic, three-quarters have now closed, and one third will never re-open”.

To stay in the game, the Brooklyn Museum is planning to sell a dozen pieces through Christie’s Auction House with a hope to raise $3.5 million for the upkeep of their remaining collection. The pandemic makes sales like this possible, in a world where it is usually frowned upon because it can put a curator in a compromising position trying to balance salaries with the success of the museum.

Many museums now actively promote digital art.

The Contemporary Art world on your street is also suffering similar chaos and closures, but again, creativity knows no bounds. Some sectors of the contemporary art world are seeing record sales that encompass VR, 3D video, GIFs, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain. The digital art world is rolling along nicely for some artists, especially those who were already in the house and have a handle on the technology. If you’re a laggard or a Luddite, don’t worry though because there’s still lots of time to catch up … it’s not as if art looks back – collectors do of course, thankfully, but rarely contemporary artists!  Digital is now a very welcomed and viable option that most artists and galleries refused to even consider a year ago, and it’s primarily because so many galleries will never re-open. Times have very radically changed in a few short months. Last year, galleries were, unfortunately, already struggling with most not sure what to do. The pandemic pushed closures into the abyss, and survivors towards digital strategies. 

Art today is experiencing a real time paradigm shift, that already, is starting to divide old school flat plane constructionists, from digital’s technology-driven contemporary artists.

Traditional painters for example will happily stay in their analog lane and serve a very dedicated buyer, who, unfortunately, statistically has already purchased the bulk of their lifetime collection. When Boomers slip into the great hereafter, so too go the collectors. Traditional two-dimensional collections will either be dropped into the market by disinterested surviving relatives, or languish in closets and attics for possibly decades until way-back collectors discover new value in much the way an old vinyl jazz collection attracts attention. As homes get smaller, wall space shrinks. Every now and then a rare and scarce treasure will escape from a dank, dusty basement. 

Digital art will become the commerce core for a new breed of art lover and collector who wants a multilayered experience that can be viewed any place there is a screen, large or otherwise. Today, you can literally carry a million-dollar art collection around on your phone, view it easily in high resolution on a friend’s large screen TV, and still keep it protected securely in an immutable blockchain network on the distributed web that cannot be hacked.

If you’re not already viewing fine art on your large screen at home or work, what are you waiting for :) another pandemic? Life is short. Enjoy art!

Scarce, original, large format, digital files are the new Warhol retro soup can, and they’re selling for thousands per file and sometimes even millions for shares on the immutable blockchain.

The Holy Grail in the digital art world today is scarcity on a digital continuum. No copies – originals only.

As the physical art world shuts down, even the most extroverted of us must turn inward – and go online wrote Alina Cohen in an article about Jerry Saltz’s new book, How to Be an Artist. Saltz said, “Viruses come, viruses go. Art will be here on the other side. It won’t disappear until all the problems it was invented to address, have been addressed.”

Here are a few places to start you down the digital blockchain rabbit hole.

* Known Origin is also a hip digital art community

* Artory delivers a novel digital blockchain idea for artists and collectors

* My digital art marketing strategy explained … Scarcity Obscura

9/11 hit so hard and fast that art spewed out voluminously in massive melancholic plumes.

Pandemic art inspiration today is different. This muse is stealthy and slower, but considerably more deadly. So far in 2020, in America alone over 210,000 have died of Covid-19 – a world record drenched in morbid irony.

The last world pandemic, 102 years ago, wasn’t as isolating as today’s trauma in 2020.

Today, we have social media – a personal mainline into everyone’s fears and myths, and if that doesn’t scare and inspire you as an artist, you’re soul is probably already dead.

In 1918 – the last pandemic, 500 million people were infected and 35 million died worldwide. It started in the spring, tapered off in the summer, and raged back with a vengeance in the fall taking a heavy toll in just a couple of months – in America, 195,000 died in October alone. Radio was the emergency health network with newspapers delivering details the next day. No internet, but amazingly, they also panicked and rioted over masks just like today, and for exactly the same reasons.

Our 2020 pandemic will leave a scar and provide inspiration for a generation who NOW have a reason to look for the answer to life and push past millennial angst. Metaphors and allegorical archetypes will be spun digitally into art pieces that exude dynamic life, and are no longer static. Jesus will blink and anoint you from an immutable 3D GIF for a steal at 0.100 ether, or, you can blow your roll at SuperRare … one of my favorites, Tide Routine at $10 grand / 25 Either

Professor Elizabeth Lee wrote a book about the links between artistic production, and health and illness and has an interesting perspective on how pandemics affect artists.

If you don’t understand the digital art dynamic, @AlisonDeNisco does a good job of explaining the mechanics behind BLOCKCHAIN ART. There’s even a Covid-19 Museum!

In my locale, universities like @UVIC in Victoria BC are preparing fine art students to be adaptive in an art world turned inside out.

In the face of massive shutdowns of art events and galleries, many artists are feeling an existential threat that causes some to freeze, while others spontaneously combust with new art directions and vision.

At the end of the day, what does the public want from art mid-pandemic? They want fun apparently, and to return to normal. Who doesn’t, but that train left the station four months ago and is a one way ride to somewhere new and exciting. 

Check out these insights to help you personally decide what the public wants from art today.

Oh, and on October 25th, Buy some Digital Art too!
It’s a good investment in your emotional health.

Art & DATA – 2020 Vision

written  by Maurice Cardinal

Today, October 25, is the day we celebrate International Artist Day.

We chose this date back in 2004 because it’s Picasso’s birthday, the artist who brought cubism to our modern world of art and changed the contemporary landscape forever.

So … here’s a toast to Pablo, to change, and also to DATA Digitalism — our topic du jour.

2019 has been a year of mainstream integration of art and data.

2020, will be beyond words in this respect–where art should always be.

And yes, we’re talking about DATA not DADA, although there are esoteric similarities. I’ve been geeking out on data for decades, ever since Napster and P2P kicked open the door, but this, is different. Digital Art Data took off this year, mostly in the underground when artists realized they could now easily protect their work online and market it globally using blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. The real game-changer however, is the Distributed Web 3.0 – light years of improvement and a successor to the outdated and spindly HTTP.

We can now affordably and relatively easily do things with data and art we didn’t even dream of a few years ago.

Data changes everything … and how you manage it changes everything else.

There are very cool blockchain art galleries around the world developing technology that makes it easy to register, certify, and display art. A small handful at this point use automated processes that allow experimental artists to slip in safely to check out the new blockchain environment. It’s not what you think, but it does work for artists and galleries alike, although in different ways.

There are two camps, purists who groove solely on digital and what they create on their computers, and in a parallel world, experienced artists with traditional and digital skills who are quickly learning that analog is rapidly moving to a digital arena. It’s a perfect world for photographers, but foreign for most two dimension canvass and paper artists, although they also have a lot to gain.

When film disappeared there was an elite collection of loyal fine art shooters who hung on until companies quit making film – not a lot of film choices anymore. A few of us reluctantly slipped over to digital earlier when we realized our film catalogs were prohibitively expensive to digitize. It was a better economic move to buy a digital camera system. There were a number of fine art film photographers who absolutely refused to make the switch. They hung on for years. A few well known film-only shooters also slipped into retirement.

Well guess what? All those fine art negatives and transparencies are finding new interest with collectors and gaining rapidly in value at unprecedented levels.

The reason, film, for the most part is almost gone, and now at finite equilibrium spiraling to a natural state of scarcity, which is the magic elixir for all collectibles.

When only one exists, and everyone wants it, that’s scarcity at its finest.

Large format 8×10 inch sheet film is one of those “when one only exists” moments because inherently, if you were shooting fine art with a large format camera using film, you weren’t clicking off ten brackets like we do today with digital, and also shooting half a dozen different perspectives. At thirty to fifty dollars a sheet with processing and printing, you took your time and created images ala fine art Zen. Most photographers shooting large format were devoted artists. It would sometimes take me days to set up a single shot. The crispness, depth, and tone of those images screamed to be reproduced billboard-size museum quality. When a grain of sand prints as wide as your thumb, the other elements around it take on an otherworldly feel. I used to sell large archival prints because it’s where the value fell, but today the interest has shifted.

I had no idea I was sitting on resurrection until I put a few old fine art film pieces on blockchain to sell as limited edition posters. No one purchased the twelve dollar posters using ETH, at least not yet, but offers to buy the original film are interesting, and cause to rethink value in photographic elements other than prints of any size. The format now also has value.

Fine art is going digital on blockchain, but it’s not fine art like you know fine art.

It’s more like, a good time to dispense with the “fine” part and find new descriptors.

The term Fine Art is too reminiscent of secretive galleries manipulating prices based on opaque information, blurry relationships, and innuendo. It’s almost the exact opposite of transparency and immutability of blockchain, and instead the new provenance of “fine” art.

Blockchain is for all artists, and when painters figure out what musicians have known for a while, and what photographers are discovering today, it will be interesting to see what happens when more and more canvasses are digitized and offered as limited edition posters. Digital blockchain posters are affordable and good purchases for entry level collectors, while more experienced art buyers will benefit from the added visibility of the original canvasses promoted through limited edition blockchain posters.

Blockchain is a perfect tool to create a perfect storm of scarcity.