Why CryptoArt?

November 29, 2023

We Humans work on trust, and trust is naturally centralizing. You can’t have an art world without dominant trends, taste-makers and centers of power. CryptoArt is no different… so why do I like it?

To get the answer, you have to understand where art has been for the last 50 years. The direction art has taken has been overly cerebral, intellectualized, and — to be honest — debilitating…

The collection of philosophies that fit under the umbrella of ‘postmodernism’ all share the same core belief: the rejection ofthe idea of truth. There are millions of consequences to this, most of them are bad. I’ll summarize 5 of them here:

1] The rejection of truth denies meaning. When art denies meaning, it stops respecting the viewer, and it seeks to confound and confuse.

Ever walk into an art gallery and get confused? Ever wonder ‘why is this art?’ — this is why.

2] The rejection of truth creates an apathy towards a natural shared sense of morality (what we call ‘common sense’). Ever walk into a gallery and see something shocking? The shock tactics of contemporary art devolve into moral relativism. #balenciaga

3] The rejection of the truth defaults to materialism. If truth can only be believed instead of discovered, then it dismisses spirituality and emotion as inferior to things that can only be confirmed by the five senses.

That means the emotional faculties of the human are disregarded. What does that mean for art? It means that art becomes overly intellectualized: wordy concepts are favored over looking good (i.e. exciting positive emotions).

Ever walk into a gallery and see something ugly? “It’s conceptual”.

4] The next consequence of denying meaning is that all symbols are considered ‘dead signifiers’. This is a massive L: the universe is frequency, frequency is pattern, and pattern generations meaning, by default. Everything is latent with meaning.

For art, this allows meaningful symbols to be hidden in full view, while their true meaning is dismissed. Culture is full of powerful symbols that act on you, and you’re none the wiser because we’ve been taught to discount their power.

This is where we hear ‘oh that’s just a conspiracy’ — meaning, pattern and the talismans of a criminal gang can be disregarded. Postmodernism prefers to put everything down to ‘coincidence’.

5] The denial of truth ultimately devolves into misanthropy. If an ideology has no final ‘resting state’, then it progressively escalates into radicalism. This is why liberal social movements started as reasonable petitions for social change, and then slowly became weaponized. Liberal social movements, untethered by a final truth, default to being misanthropic because the denial of truth ultimately means the denial of the sacredness of Human life: the value of a person trends towards zero.

What does Humanity=0 look like? ‘Murder’ is normalized (euthanasia, abortion). Control of movement (lockdowns), reproduction (chemical sterilization and artificial wombs). In other words, the core Human right to life and the ability to make new life is removed, leaving Humanity with exactly zero authority.

For the last 50 years, art has cheered on these escalating social movements, unquestioningly affirming them, and ultimately, has served to underline the debilitating message that the value of Human life trends towards zero. Ever detect a certain cynicism in art and fashion? Here’s why.

There are many, many more consequences of the denial of truth and meaning. The TLDR is that the last 50 years in art and fashion has cheer-leaded a cynical, anti-Human ideology. I don’t throw all art under the bus. But silence is complicity.

And people are shocked when fashion houses are accused of child abuse? If you want to understand why art and fashion have often depicted children in states of abuse, subjugation and distress, you have to realize that there has been a lot of momentum building in misanthropy over the last 50 years, and it all derives from a moral relativism — a philosophy based on nihilism and the postmodern denial of meaning.

SO WHY DO I LIKE CRYPTOART?

Just like cryptocurrency turns the legacy financial system on its head, CryptoArt has the potential to brush aside the cynical ideology of postmodernism accompany a revived culture.

CryptoArt and digital art are definitively visual. This brings a refocus on beauty. You cant have beauty without meaning, because beauty generates positive emotion and this is meaningful by default. This all takes place on the screen, prompting us to find meaning in the visual, once again.

The visual realm of CryptoArt and digital art has the potential to revitalize a sensitivity for symbolism, meaning and pattern.

As digital art triggeres a renewed visual sensitivity, it accompanies a mysticism, a — dare I say it — spirituality. This is not the religious kind; its simply a way of seeing that acknowledges and respects the emotional faculty of the Human being. (And in so doing, respecting the essential power of Human potential).

As meaning and emotion returns to art, you have the basis of a deeply Humanistic and introspective culture. This is massive. Because such introspection has never been accompanied by the convenience of high technology.

And this is the foundation of a Renaissance 2.0, a ‘great awakening’. Forget the bored apes and useless pfps — that’s just noise. The visual diversity of the CryptoArt community is pre-imagining a future free of both misanthropy and the limits of organized religion. A new truth.

And that’s why I like CryptoArt. Within new art strategies there is the possibility of self-actualization that hasn’t existed for a very long time.

A version of this article was original published on twitter in fragments. These fragments inspired the basis for chapters in my latest book, Art & Money. The book is available on Amazon at mybook.to/artandmoney