∅
Quote from CohentheWriter on 6. September 2022, 20:27Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/the-permanent-collection?collection=0x41a322b28d0ff354040e2cbc676f0320d8c8850d&token=559&page=4
Source Link: https://superrare.com/artwork/%E2%88%85-559
Date Minted: August 1, 2018
Artist Description: A void on the chain
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
You just know that people would hate this piece on principle. It’s often pointed to as the worst impulses of the contemporary art world, this kind of hyper-conceptual absence of art, especially when affixed with significance or praise by a person or person(s) in a (theoretical) position of power. “This isn’t art”; you can hear the voices clamoring. Are they wrong? I mean, literally, this piece is NOT art. It’s nothing at all.
I was at MOMA not too long ago with my kid brother, he an unabashed detractor of the more abstract kind of contemporary art (dude sends me a text out of the blue one day, saying “I’m at the Guggenheim…Kandinsky sucks.” The principle of the thing is what I’m getting at.), and we saw a piece that was nothing more than a couple of faint, off-white triangles interpolated into a white square canvas. I don’t remember exactly what he said at the time, but it was something along the lines of “This is what’s wrong with art museums. They have stuff like this and call it art. ” I understand the argument. We all can, I’m sure. “Anyone could make that,” is one of the usual admonishments. “This doesn’t take any skill or effort,” is another good one. But the context and concept and purpose is always going to matter more than the actual piece itself; this is true of almost all fine art, from Picasso to Warhol to Kahlo to WeiWei to goddamn Michelangelo, only there’s often enough an attractive or fascinating image/performance/aesthetic quality to hide that truth. But it’s all context. And it’s all heavily concept, too. And ∅ by ArtonymousArtifakt is as transparent a demonstration of that fact than anything I’ve seen. This piece, described as “A void on the chain,” is perfect. Perfect absence. Not a canvas to discuss. Not a slice in the canvas a la Lucia Fontana. Not a pixel a la Pak. Just whiteness. It doesn’t pretend to aspire to be a pixel. It doesn’t pretend to aspire to anything. The point is that it itself is nothingness, an absence of thing, and it exists, immutably, on the blockchain, as per the description. ∅ is conceptual art taken to its most extreme, most logical conclusion. As such, it deserves a proportionately conceptual, extreme analysis. I just hope I’m capable of such a thing.
Usually, this is where I discuss the aesthetics of a piece. Well, let’s have at it: The entire frame is white. There, now you know.
I initially messaged the M○C△ team to say that there was something wrong with this piece as it is displayed in the Genesis collection. “The piece…is totally blank. Both in our collection and on Opensea,” I said, though I was quickly corrected. But that’s an important point. The first time you see this piece, if you don’t expect it to show the nothingness it shows. You might well assume that something is wrong. That there’s an error on your screen or with the web environment within which it sits. In the physical world, the markings of a virus or sickness are usually additions to the norm: a pustule, a rash, some differentiating color, paleness, baggy eyes, etc. In the digital world, the markings of a sickness are these absences. The blankness of a page that won’t load. The dreaded blue screen of yesteryear. A dead website that remains white until we must forcibly close the page. Sometimes there’s color represented, but even this color is devoid of other identifying factors. And so there is an implication of sickness, incompatibility, and frustration inherently communicated in ∅. Not only are we allowed to find this piece stupid and annoying, but we’re almost guided to such emotions by the way ∅ evokes other aspects of our online life which we, en masse, also find stupid and annoying.
But then we have the other crucial characteristic, that ∅ nevertheless lives immutably on the blockchain. And indeed, on some block, somewhere, is this blank void of a piece, a bit of the chain that will forevermore be characterized by a nothingness, or a nothingness that comes dangerously close to representing illness or dysfunction. It can never be destroyed. The blockchain is, thus, forevermore imperfect, with this small but omnipresent blemish upon it, a bit of its hyper-advanced ledger technology used for the ironic storage of “nothing.” Though even nothing is something, right? So, in a way, this piece is inherently oxymoronic, for in an attempt to show a void, the piece instead interjects itself with all the associations that a void, or any way we might have to describe it, contain. Hell, I’ve already written ~700 words about it, so there must be more to this nothingness, to this void, than one might expect up-front.
So that makes it somewhat self-defeating. In order to create a true void, ∅ would have to not exist in the first place. But as soon as it is there, in color or concept, it becomes a thing, tangible in some way, or at least the object of attention. I find it interesting that the artist calls themselves Artonymous, a bastardization of the word anonymous. But is there ever true anonymity if your known by any name? The only true anonymity is nonexistence. And the only true nonexistence is inattention. In all counts, by all means, the artist has failed in their nomenclatural endeavor. Failing more with each word I add. We know them now, somewhat. We see their art, giving it form of our own volition. But what a weird and exciting kind of failed experiment!
Source Link: https://superrare.com/artwork/%E2%88%85-559
Date Minted: August 1, 2018
Artist Description: A void on the chain
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
You just know that people would hate this piece on principle. It’s often pointed to as the worst impulses of the contemporary art world, this kind of hyper-conceptual absence of art, especially when affixed with significance or praise by a person or person(s) in a (theoretical) position of power. “This isn’t art”; you can hear the voices clamoring. Are they wrong? I mean, literally, this piece is NOT art. It’s nothing at all.
I was at MOMA not too long ago with my kid brother, he an unabashed detractor of the more abstract kind of contemporary art (dude sends me a text out of the blue one day, saying “I’m at the Guggenheim…Kandinsky sucks.” The principle of the thing is what I’m getting at.), and we saw a piece that was nothing more than a couple of faint, off-white triangles interpolated into a white square canvas. I don’t remember exactly what he said at the time, but it was something along the lines of “This is what’s wrong with art museums. They have stuff like this and call it art. ” I understand the argument. We all can, I’m sure. “Anyone could make that,” is one of the usual admonishments. “This doesn’t take any skill or effort,” is another good one. But the context and concept and purpose is always going to matter more than the actual piece itself; this is true of almost all fine art, from Picasso to Warhol to Kahlo to WeiWei to goddamn Michelangelo, only there’s often enough an attractive or fascinating image/performance/aesthetic quality to hide that truth. But it’s all context. And it’s all heavily concept, too. And ∅ by ArtonymousArtifakt is as transparent a demonstration of that fact than anything I’ve seen. This piece, described as “A void on the chain,” is perfect. Perfect absence. Not a canvas to discuss. Not a slice in the canvas a la Lucia Fontana. Not a pixel a la Pak. Just whiteness. It doesn’t pretend to aspire to be a pixel. It doesn’t pretend to aspire to anything. The point is that it itself is nothingness, an absence of thing, and it exists, immutably, on the blockchain, as per the description. ∅ is conceptual art taken to its most extreme, most logical conclusion. As such, it deserves a proportionately conceptual, extreme analysis. I just hope I’m capable of such a thing.
Usually, this is where I discuss the aesthetics of a piece. Well, let’s have at it: The entire frame is white. There, now you know.
I initially messaged the M○C△ team to say that there was something wrong with this piece as it is displayed in the Genesis collection. “The piece…is totally blank. Both in our collection and on Opensea,” I said, though I was quickly corrected. But that’s an important point. The first time you see this piece, if you don’t expect it to show the nothingness it shows. You might well assume that something is wrong. That there’s an error on your screen or with the web environment within which it sits. In the physical world, the markings of a virus or sickness are usually additions to the norm: a pustule, a rash, some differentiating color, paleness, baggy eyes, etc. In the digital world, the markings of a sickness are these absences. The blankness of a page that won’t load. The dreaded blue screen of yesteryear. A dead website that remains white until we must forcibly close the page. Sometimes there’s color represented, but even this color is devoid of other identifying factors. And so there is an implication of sickness, incompatibility, and frustration inherently communicated in ∅. Not only are we allowed to find this piece stupid and annoying, but we’re almost guided to such emotions by the way ∅ evokes other aspects of our online life which we, en masse, also find stupid and annoying.
But then we have the other crucial characteristic, that ∅ nevertheless lives immutably on the blockchain. And indeed, on some block, somewhere, is this blank void of a piece, a bit of the chain that will forevermore be characterized by a nothingness, or a nothingness that comes dangerously close to representing illness or dysfunction. It can never be destroyed. The blockchain is, thus, forevermore imperfect, with this small but omnipresent blemish upon it, a bit of its hyper-advanced ledger technology used for the ironic storage of “nothing.” Though even nothing is something, right? So, in a way, this piece is inherently oxymoronic, for in an attempt to show a void, the piece instead interjects itself with all the associations that a void, or any way we might have to describe it, contain. Hell, I’ve already written ~700 words about it, so there must be more to this nothingness, to this void, than one might expect up-front.
So that makes it somewhat self-defeating. In order to create a true void, ∅ would have to not exist in the first place. But as soon as it is there, in color or concept, it becomes a thing, tangible in some way, or at least the object of attention. I find it interesting that the artist calls themselves Artonymous, a bastardization of the word anonymous. But is there ever true anonymity if your known by any name? The only true anonymity is nonexistence. And the only true nonexistence is inattention. In all counts, by all means, the artist has failed in their nomenclatural endeavor. Failing more with each word I add. We know them now, somewhat. We see their art, giving it form of our own volition. But what a weird and exciting kind of failed experiment!