Why would Anyone Buy a Nifty?
Now that I sort of figured out the basics, enough to mint some niftys and buy my very own touchon.eth and even my first NFT by another artist, here are some initial thoughts from an artist point of view.
As an artist, one has to wonder about this new market place for artists to present their artworks in a novel way: Non fungible tokens, NFTs, Niftys.
I’m not going to try to explain what these are. I’ll refer you to cryptogeum.
This article is more about my thinking on the use of niftys as an artist.
As an engaged and prolific artist, a great deal of my work, research and experiments never leave the studio. Even with a strong national market only so many works can be presented for gallery exhibition and placement. The ability to share works on paper, drawings, collected photographs, etc. through Niftys allows me to inexpensively share things that otherwise might not be seen for another hundred years if ever. So I see the NFT market as a new opportunity to exhibit and make available (what I suppose could be called derivatives?) of my small works, experiments and marginalia for those interested in a deeper dive into my oeuvre.
Why would anyone buy a nifty? Good question! In recent years I have talked to dealers about potential issues that our culture is dealing with related to the art market. The art market that I participate in is composed of many dealers around the country who operate small galleries that represent 25 to 40 contemporary working artists. This is the middle class of the art world.
I am not a part of the ‘top of the heap’ art market primarily occupied by wealthy ‘investment’ collectors, the exclusive high end gallery dealers that serve them, auctioneers and appraisers from Christies and Sotheby's, as well as art critics, historians, institutional academics and museum curators. The high society you might say. That seems to me to be shark infested waters, not the kind of swimming holes most artists feel comfortable in. But that is where all of the attention and press goes and most of the money since that layer of the market is primarily about investment value and the kind of exclusivity money can buy. It is an intentionally small circle and that is fine by me. That sphere helps to uphold the rest of the market like bitcoin does for crypto currencies in general.
Coming back to my conversations with dealers: what has been going on for a while now is that everyone’s heads are glued to their smart phones and computer screens and consequently the attention span and the ability to focus and maintain concentration is becoming very short. Everybody has too much on their plates and can’t keep up. Like I say, The great thing about computers is that they save us a lot of time on work we would have never done.
That is not a good thing for the arts which needs an audience that can clear their heads enough to contemplate the art that attracts them and take it in. For galleries that sell contemporary art to the upper middle class and above, this problem has the potential to cause problems. Art needs focused connection, people need to feel the work on an emotional level in order to create the conditions for dealers to sell it.
NFTs have the potential to bridge this gap by letting potential collectors purchase a digital version of an artwork right from their phones. Then they add it to their digital wallet. That version of it is theirs and they don’t have to worry about the time and money it takes to see the original analog work at the gallery and then have it shipped or framed or hung. They also don’t have to worry if they have enough wall space or the ‘right’ wall space. They don’t have to worry if it fits their décor or if their interior decorator or spouse approves of it. It can be more personal in an impersonal kind of way. This can potentially cut back on a lot of friction that is often present in a placement of a work of art.
Currently where the real friction is has to do with the fact that only a tiny percentage of people have or know anything about having crypto currency like Etherium (ETH) that most collectors buy crypto art with or how to set up a crypto wallet so that they can buy and collect digital art. So artists have to consider that only the crypto crowd are going to be the audience for some time to come. This means that the crypto crowd has a different taste and different interests than those outside of that crypto community. It is its own ecosystem. So that is something to consider. Who is that audience and what is their conversation related to art?
There are a lot of digital artworks that are native to the environment, that were created and actually live in the digital world. These works, till now, had to be exported from their indigenous environment as, for instance, prints and so have suffered for it in the market. With NFTs digital artists and digital photographers have a new medium and market to show their goods.
I am not one of those kind of artists myself so I have to go through the opposite process, digitize physically created works and bring them into a digitally driven market. How is that going to work out? I don’t really know yet… Where is all of this going? I couldn’t tell you. Only time will tell.
Then there is this article to consider here on Medium by Everest Pipkin.
And there is this blog post by Mark Cuban
You can also check out The Defiant on Youtube (all related to DEFI) I like their material and it is entertaining.
That’s it for now, please share this content with your friends, hit the clap button a few times and leave a comment if you like.
all the best!
Cecil Touchon
Buy my Fine Art prints at iartcollector.com
Buy my NFTS at OpenSea.io
Buy my books at LULU
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