Edward Lee
Societal transformations often spark controversy. In the early 1900s, a new movement in art — derisively called “cubism” for the bizarre cubes the art supposedly depicted — sparked backlash.
In 1913, students of the School of the Art Institute organized a mass protest. The students “convicted” Henri Matisse for “artistic murder” and imposed the death penalty in a mock trial. Though Matisse wasn’t a cubist, the term was associated then with everything evil about modern art.
The misguided students weren’t alone. U.S. newspapers fomented people’s fears about cubism. The artists were disparaged as “freaks” and scam artists. Their artworks were “ugly,” “bizarre” and “degenerate.”
A New York Times editorial said that cubism is a “false art” and “a part of the general movement … to disrupt and degrade, if not to destroy, not only art, but literature and society, too.”
The Washington Times even suggested that the modern artists might have to be quarantined, and the Constitution amended, to limit free speech.
A now infamous pamphlet attacked the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first major exhibition of modern art, lambasting it as the product of a “modernistic degenerate cult.” Tragically, this view later prevailed in Germany, resulting in the Nazi confiscation of tens of thousands of “degenerate” artworks.
This sad chapter in history provides an important lesson. Don’t be too quick to judge.
Pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, cubism is recognized today as one of the most influential artistic movements. It shattered the Renaissance’s conventional view and liberated artists to take multiple perspectives.
Today, we are witnessing the greatest disruption to the art world since cubism — along with a similar backlash. Underlying this disruption is a technology called a non-fungible token, or NFT, a computer program that establishes a new type of virtual ownership not just for digital artworks but also for anything that can be owned.
At first, this idea may sound like fantasy. My theory of “Tokenism,” however, explains this radical transformation.
Tokenism is an artistic, cultural, and technological movement that creates a new kind of ownership in property — symbolized by a virtual token — through a process of technological abstraction and artificial scarcity effectuated by NFTs. (I distinguish it from the negative hiring practice of tokenism by capitalizing the first letter.) Just as cubism radically upended how art is created and viewed in “cubes,” Tokenism radically upends how art is owned virtually in “tokens.”
NFTs have spawned a new market for digital artworks. In the past, digital artworks weren’t prized in the art world because digital copies lacked an original. Why buy a digital artwork that can easily be copied online for free? NFTs solved that problem by creating a digital original through a virtual token recorded on blockchain, a public ledger.
Now leading art institutions from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art are exploring digital artworks through NFTs, including for permanent acquisitions.
This March marked the two-year anniversary of the third highest auction sale by a living artist: a $69.3 million digital artwork NFT called “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days” by Beeple, whose sale bested the single sales of Salvador Dalí and Frida Kahlo.
The artist Refik Anadol’s exhibition of “Unsupervised” at MoMA has captivated people’s imaginations so much that MoMA extended the showing. And scores of digital artists around the world are selling their works on online marketplaces, such as Art Blocks, and in Christie’s and Sotheby’s auctions.
Of course, there are skeptics. Naysayers have attacked NFTs as “scams” and “Ponzi schemes” of the “cult of crypto.” The reaction is almost as hostile as the initial reception to cubism.
These attacks will not age well. Our world has become more virtual due to the pandemic. Virtual ownership through NFTs is another part of this profound societal transformation.
Businesses from Adidas and Nike to Anheuser-Busch, Salesforce, and Starbucks are developing new ways to engage and interact with people through NFTs. Even during the economic downturn, Starbucks created Odyssey NFTs to enhance its loyalty program, providing new experiences and benefits for its customers.
We are now witnessing a Virtual Renaissance for the ages. The 21st century’s modern art will be digital. This Renaissance is fueled by a technology that enables virtual ownership and empowers artists to bypass the industry gatekeepers and galleries.
Through NFTs, creators can now take control.
Edward Lee is a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Chicago-Kent College of Law and author of “Creators Take Control: How NFTs Revolutionize Art, Business, and Entertainment.”
