Intangible art and digital insurgence: How NFTs may or may not liberate the artist from the art market
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2022-08-30
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en
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General criticism of the non-fungible token or NFT (in the form of a digital image) is that it is an inherently worthless product. The most frequent reason given for this criticism is that NFTs create artificial, meaningless scarcity. An NFT is merely a certificate of ownership. The digital image linked to this certificate can easily be copied and saved by anyone, meaning that anyone could technically ‘own’ and enjoy the original of this image on their own computer, without ever paying for it. But there will be only one person who owns this certificate, or token, linked to this image. Many see this as a fake form of ownership. Yet, an increasing number of people are choosing to buy NFTs, sometimes for exorbitant prices. In 2021, the NFT market was already worth 17 billion dollars. Artists and collectors involved in this new ‘craze’ seem to see a lot of potential in this new medium. Especially towards artists there are many claims that NFTs shall liberate them from the art world as they know it. In this research I make use of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory and practice theory in order to analyze to what extent NFTs have caused a shift specifically in the position of artists within the art field. I analyzed the traditional or pre-NFT art market and analyzed the habitus of the five bestselling living contemporary artists, which I juxtaposed with a similar analysis of the NFT marketplaces and its newly emerged gatekeeping systems, as well as the habitus of bestselling artists on these platforms. I found that NFT marketplaces provide various different forms of gatekeeping which has resulted in NFT artists with quite diverse habitus, in stark contrast to the habitus of contemporary artists, which proved to be generally homogeneous. NFT marketplaces create new forms of practice for artists. However, whether they provide artists with more autonomy is questionable, as NFT marketplaces do rely on the artist promoting themselves, only a relatively small amount of NFT artists sell, and competition on marketplaces is fierce.
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Faculteit der Letteren