Art and Creativity: “Art Will Always Need to Be Tangible!”

A peripheral friend of ours — who incidentally happens to run a digital art website — announced earlier today that he was not going to get involved with NFTs because, in his opinion, ”art will always need to be tangible.”

Sticker on the rear window of my truck

The statement was, of course, wildly unpopular with a number of his followers who happen to be digital artists, so he went on to explain further that the deeper meaning of his statement was that the utility art brings to us needs to have at least the potential to be expressed tangibly; that the long term value of art ultimately is tied up in its tangibility.

Whereas that doesn't necessarily represent my personal opinion, it's certainly an interesting and timely topic.

Being very familiar with the digital art scene, his relative rejection of NFTs was primarily based on the fact that he sees it as a game of making money rather than a game of creative expression. He pointed out that the vast majority of people involved in the NFT scene are there primarily to trade for profit not because they enjoy the art.

Whereas I can definitely appreciate his point — and I say that as somebody who's been in the business end of art for many years — I would temper the statement he made with the reality that NFTs are still a very new field that remains in the process of defining itself while trying to find its footing.

On the other hand, it's not a stretch for me to look at the current state of the NFT market and definitely recognize the elements of ”Tulip Bulb Mania” there.

I have little doubt that these markets will suffer a nasty crash in the not too distant future, as people sort out what is authentic art and creativity that has some sort of artistic value, versus what is simply a money making scheme being exploited purely by merit of the fact that the term ”NFT” is attached to it.

In a sense, it's a bit like the infamous "dot-com crash" of the early 2000s. The crash by no means meant the end of the Internet, but it sorted out the actual businesses from the wannabe's simply trying to cash in on having a business associated with the wild frontier of the Internet... as it was, at the time.

In the case of art, it's actually an interesting scenario.

Unlike many products, art doesn't really have a ”utility value” as such. And yet? What observers might consider good (or innovative) art tends to float to the top, while most of the garbage ends up either at your local thrift store or in the actual garbage.

These days, people are monetizing a lot of nonsense and garbage, and perhaps that was precisely what our friend wanted to avoid.

Thanks for stopping by and having a look!

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