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NFTs make us ask ourselves why we’re buying art
The link between art and economics is a difficult one to parse out.
It’s been said that art is the most unregulated global market because it has no agreed upon basis of value.
Theories of value can be found in the art market and while some artists and viewers may agree on a work’s relative worth, there is no shared language or understanding of what drives price.
Studio arts such as painting and literature have been around for thousands of years — but digital art has only been available since the 70s with the creation of the first bitmap graphics on a computer.
This begs the question, can blockchain help us understand art?
By making digital assets out of traditional artwork, we begin to make new digital assets that are art — or something more specific — virtual collectibles or crypto-assets.
Those might be more precise terms for what is being created in this new digital realm beyond art. This article will focus on the question of whether NFTs can make a new art market and if so, what kind?
In the age of mass-produced music and infinite reproducibility, it seems difficult to justify spending money on any one copy or iteration of a work (though I do have prints of Winslow Homer, Caspar David Friedrich, and John…
