Miguel Salvatierra I Sevilla, (EFE).- “Crypto art”, or digital art in NFT (non-fungible token) format, has gone from being a source of skepticism to competing with traditional art, which has led to a growing number of of artists who combine the creation of physical and digital works of art.
This is the case of the artist Antonio García Villarán who, in statements to EFE, wanted to make it clear that “not all art is done in NFTs and not all NFTs are art”.
And it is that, since the purchase and sale of these tokens -digital pieces whose authenticity can be certified- subject to the ‘blockchain’ technology, which encrypts the ownership of a digital file through codes, have sold digital works subject to this technology , which were far from artistic quality standards, for millions of euros.
This is what happened with the ‘cryptopunks’, a series of 10,000 pixelated heads, created from software, and that its promoter, the company Larva Labs, “gave as a gift when creating them”, as García Villarán affirms.
In addition to these famous pixelated faces, non-fungible tokens from the beginning of the source code of the World Wide Web (WWW) or from the first tweet of the creator of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, have been sold for millions of dollars.
How is a work of digital art valued?
The sky-high prices paid years ago for some NFTs have raised many questions about what are the criteria for pricing examples of this technology that sparked a global craze and was directly linked to cryptocurrencies.
The criteria for elucidating the price of digital works of art, the Sevillian artist has pointed out, are usually the same as for any work of art: the path of the artist, or “crypto-artist”, his previous works and the state of the market in the time of sale, that is, “what people are willing to pay for the work”.
“An NFT is a digital work of art, the only difference with a physical work of art is the support”, therefore, when assessing the price of a work, the criteria are “the same”, because, in the end and after all, it is the same artist who is doing it.
Ignorance of these criteria and of what a digital work of art really is has led many investors to lose millions of dollars because “they have not investigated” and “they simply thought that buying them would make them rich”.
This initial furor has already calmed down, and, since NFT art was separated from cryptocurrencies and possible scams, the market “has reached its right measure” and, today, Antonio García Villarán sells his physical and digital works of art at “similar” prices.
digital artists
The proliferation of digital works of art subject to ‘blockchain’ technology has brought with it an increase in conventional artists who have adapted their work to the digital world and others who have chosen to transform their physical work into NFTs and crypto art.
This increase also caused some artists to jump on this bandwagon suddenly and increase the prices of their physical works transformed into digital format with the aim of getting rich.
The “opportunists”, a term coined by Antonio García Villarán, chose to make “collectibles”, that is, different versions of the same work, so that it would have a greater reach and thus multiply the opportunities to generate income.
“These collectibles, which can be likened to card collections, cannot be called art,” he said.
In this sense, García Villarán is committed to separating physical art from digital art and preventing the latter from becoming an extension of the former.
The artist only uses digital drawing to create the NFTs that he sells on his website along with his physical work, with prices that are “on par”.
Currently, García Villarán sells more physical work solely because he has “a greater production”, but, he has acknowledged, last year he sold more NFTs because he created more.
Future of NFTs and crypto art
Once the NFT market has stabilized, the question that artists and analysts are asking is what is the path that digital works of art will have in a world that has not changed so much and with canons established centuries ago as art.
“NFTs and crypto art are part of the artistic world, some agree and others don’t,” the Sevillian artist responded to this question, pointing out that the market “will warm up even more.”
But the reality is that part of the art world is still unaware of this technology and the implications it may have for the future of the sector.
Ignacio Cano, curator of the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville, has acknowledged to Efe that he does not have “resources” to talk about art in NFT format since he does not know how it works, so “he does not yet have a formed opinion”.
This is the general trend in a part of the art world that either avoids speaking out about it due to the controversies that ‘crypto-art’ has generated in the past, or is still unaware of how it can affect a sector that has evolved slowly over the centuries. . EFE
