Is art on NFTs art?

The explosion of NFTs in the art world

More than a year ago, on March 11, 2021, artist Mike Winkelmann (aka Beeple) successfully sold a digital painting for a record price of $69.3 million, just because it was attached to a certificate of ownership called NFT. This huge sum of money created a crazy race among artists from all fields - illustrators, musicians, photographers... to join the NFT gold rush.

In the 12 months since, more than $44 billion has been spent on some 6 million NFT products — mostly digital creations, some of which are physical paintings and sculptures.

Born in 2017 but only popular and booming in nearly a year, NFT - short for "non-fungible tokens" - are digital items with certificates of authenticity and ownership registered on the blockchain, the technology behind the development of cryptocurrencies.

NFT artworks have the owner's digital signature and can represent anything - from player cards, in-game items, paintings, photos, musical works to Twitter posts... Many artists have found a new direction by converting their works to the NFT exchange, many even think that this is the "ideal market" for art products.

But will this huge wave of NFTs really bring any changes to the art industry? And if so, even if it does, will NFTs be “protectors” for artists, or “traitors” stabbing them in the back?

NFTs offer the opportunity to affirm artistic value

The NFT art trading market is bustling thanks to the appearance of many artists. From Western countries, the wave of NFT trading quickly influenced Asian countries. NFT technology can even introduce to viewers works of art that have never been exhibited, for example, the painting on two sides of canvas by artist Bui Xuan Phai and artist Thanh Chuong.

Since the beginning of 2021, the Vietnamese art world has also begun to join the "fever" of NFT works.

August 2021, young artistXeo Chu earned nearly 23,000 USD(equivalent to 500 million VND) for his first NFT painting on the Binance NFT electronic trading platform. This is the highest priced NFT painting from Vietnam.

Before Xeo Chu, two other Vietnamese representatives participating in the painting exhibition on the Binance NFT platform were Phong Luong and Tu Na. In his exhibition, Tu Na earned more than 31,000 USD, the highest priced painting was up to more than 5,000 USD. Meanwhile, Phong Luong's exhibition earned nearly 7,000 USD, the artist's highest priced painting was 3,000 USD.

In addition to painting, Vietnam's music industry is also bustling to appear on NFT exchanges. Recently, a collection (BST) named "Binz - DBMH [Tuniver]" was discovered listed on Binance's NFT market. The information clearly states that this is the first NFT collection of Binz - a famous rapper and musician in Vietnam - for fans.

The three most “expensive” rappers in Vietnam, LK, Datmaniac and B Ray, have also made moves to join the blockchain world. In addition, many other big names in the Vietnamese music industry have negotiated and cooperated to issue NFTs in the near future.

In the film industry, a special photo featuring six "hundred billion" directors from Vietnam was converted into an NFT work, and was sold by director Vo Thanh Hoa for nearly 400 USD. However, the photo was later resold for more than 2,000 USD.

Like other fields, NFT art products are worth from tens to tens of millions of USD, depending on the rarity and uniqueness of the work, or the popularity of the artist. NFT works cannot be destroyed or copied, and this factor allows the owner to profit from the product they hold.

But is NFT itself displeasing to artists?

When it first appeared, NFT was expected to bring a “future era” to the art field. But after 5 years of existence and a year of boom, the artists themselves are turning their backs on this form of storing and trading digital works. The first reason is that NFT completely goes against the “potential” of protectingcopyrightwhich is, in fact, its role.

One of the values ​​of NFTs is that they give digital artworks a benefit that only traditional artworks have had, which is “ownership”. However, this ownership is only nominal, as anyone can take other people’s works, whether public or private, and resell them as NFTs - because there is no technology to prove whether the product you post is your own creative result or not.

The above situation of plagiarism and author impersonation has become one of the reasons why many artists have an unfavorable view of NFT.

The second reason many artists are concerned about is the harmful effects on...environmentthat NFTs cause.

Most NFTs are currently traded on the Ethereum platform, where the creation of tokens that encode digital works relies on complex and energy-intensive algorithms. According to market tracker Digicomist, the platform uses as much electricity as the Netherlands, with carbon emissions equivalent to Singapore. Climate concerns are also driving growing opposition to NFTs.

The third reason, except for copyright, the problem of NFT also lies indevaluation of art. NFTs are, in part, becoming a “cradle” for illegal money laundering, or for creating fame in the name of art. In addition, there are works created in a “mass production” style, cooked by a robot capable of creating millions of similar drawings.

“If art is mass-produced on an assembly line, will the core value of emotion still be there?" - Khanh Toan, a young artist in Vietnam, expressed his concern.

Finally, the mainopportunity to affirm artistic valueIt could also be… fake. Real artists who participate in NFTs for real money often have to accept the fact that most of the works are very difficult to sell, and they need a lot of money to “mint” an NFT (each individual work costs between $70-100 to mint). This means that if an artist creates a work on the NFT platform but it doesn’t sell, they will lose all the money they initially spent to create the NFT, and at the same time, no one will know that the work exists.

Conclusion

"NFT is not a new medium, a new way of creating art, a new theme or style. It is simply a way to buy and sell digital art. When we cut out the monetization aspect, NFT does not really change art in any way" - Cat Graffam, a painter living in the US, said in a video she posted with the topic "artists' perspective on NFT".

Perhaps NFTs will bring changes, even revolutions, to the art field in the long run. But for now, it is still too early to judge the good or bad of this digital market.

After all, art is a land of creation and communication of emotions. Once these two elements are blurred, art will probably no longer be true art.

An