“Looking at EVERYDAYS: NFT art and the picturing of the new financial system.”

University of Zagreb. Digital Art History–Methods, Practices, Epistemologies III Annual Conference

Oct. 2021

This paper explores the proliferation of artworks supported by the non-fungible token technology (NFT), as it articulates a distinctly post-modern engagement with the notions of fiscal and aesthetic uncertainty, further enhanced by the NFT's unambiguous connection to the world of cryptocurrency. Specifically, I consider the digital collage EVERYDAYS: First 5,000 Days by Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple, which earlier this year made history as the first fully digital artwork sold by a major auction house. Inevitably affected by, but hopefully conscious of, the sensationalization of the EVERYDAYS sale as an event, a close consideration of Beeple's collage may reveal the work as a visual (re-)formulation of a long-established history of chance and trickery as foundational for Western capitalist economies.

This paper turns to the writings of Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, and Alexander Galloway, among others, to demonstrate the potential readings of the NFT artworks as indicators of the contemporary fluctuations in financial and artistic realms as they shape the novel modes of digital artistic practices.