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Cubist Satoshi 11/21

Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/permanent-collection?collection=0x22d31a97da148476aa2b76d63ef2f20b53f7ab4e&token=12&page=2

Source Link: https://opensea.io/assets/0x22d31a97da148476aa2b76d63ef2f20b53f7ab4e/12

Date Minted: February 2, 2020

Artist Description: While Picasso paints a figure and an animal separated by a bitcoin ‘B’ on glass a cubist portrait of Satoshi shatters and shards apart over top of him in the geometric shapes that create the painting. Somehow the work of art reassembles itself but this time with the portrait of the important French art dealer Ambroise Vollard in the place of Satoshi. Subsequently, Vollard shatters and falls to the floor leaving a somewhat amused Satoshi underneath with a rocket launching and a ‘21’ rotating across the painting surface. Say hello to Cubist Satoshi.

CohentheWriter’s Commentary:

It would certainly seem that nothing less complex than cubism could hope to convey the tightly-wound images which populate Trevor Jones’ mind. Throughout his oeuvre, Jones has managed to create an entirely recognizable and technically-elite style for himself, something overtly and indiscriminately unique in a space that is so often characterized by imitation or homage. There is no imitation here. There can be no imitation here. Jones creates hyper-complicated pieces in the cubist style, where images are broken down into shapes, into polygons, into disembodied and fragmented colors, textures, lines, and which are sometimes animated, as if Picasso himself got his hands on some 21st-century tech. Picasso himself makes an appearance in the piece in question today, Cubist Satoshi 11/21, which Jones put together alongside a very descriptive and helpful Artist Commentary:

“While Picasso paints a figure and an animal separated by a bitcoin ‘B’ on glass a cubist portrait of Satoshi shatters and shards apart over top of him in the geometric shapes that create the painting. Somehow the work of art reassembles itself but this time with the portrait of the important French art dealer Ambroise Vollard in the place of Satoshi. Subsequently, Vollard shatters and falls to the floor leaving a somewhat amused Satoshi underneath with a rocket launching and a ‘21’ rotating across the painting surface. Say hello to Cubist Satoshi.”

This is somewhat difficult to parse through without context, so I’ll expand. The image begins on a black screen, though the background quickly fills up with the alleged figure of Pablo Picasso himself, though too blurry to be sure. He’s painting. He’s ethereal. Beside him, a large human figure, which appears to be scribbled on the screen white paint, materializes, as does a large Bitcoin “B”, and what looks like a small rodent. Then, rushing in from the edges of the piece, countless fractaled shapes, triangles and trapezoids, of various color and texture, form together and completely overlay the previous image. This new image is densely layered in blue and grey and rust hues. It appears to show a man, Ambroise Vollard (whom I have no personal knowledge of), looking downcast, looking sad. But Vollard’s face was only a shell, one which cracks and falls and reveals the visage of Dorian Nakamoto underneath it, Nakamoto being the Japanese-American man who many believed (still believe?) to be Satoshi Nakamoto, anonymous creator of Bitcoin. Dorian has become a kind of figurative visual placeholder in lieu of any actual information about the real Nakamoto. This version of Mr. Nakamoto is composed of many dozens of fractals, and he wears a “somewhat amused” grin. Hidden in the image are popular cryptocurrency-centric visual references: the “to the Moon” rocket emoji, and the number 21, perhaps aiming to represent the total number of Bitcoin in existence, 21 Million.

So that’s what the image is in its visual totality, and it repeats on an endless loop: Satoshi being broken apart into pieces, with Picasso appearing within the ensuing blackness, the few “Picasso” line drawings fading into existence, and then the reassembling of Satoshi, his face cloaked in the Vollard’s mask. And so on and so forth.

Without delving too deep into the possible meanings of the piece, we should take a moment and appreciate the artistry here. Cubist Satoshi moves between forms so quickly, so it may be hard to ground ourselves at any point, but Jones’ use of color is perpetually breathtaking, masterful. Shades of rusty-orange glow and glimmer, as if these are not colors but lodestone veins of copper chipped out of rock. The fragments which contain and construct Satoshi’s body have a mirror-like quality to them. Colors and aspects of Satoshi’s form appear to be refracted and doubled, as if we are seeing Satoshi Nakamoto’s reflection in a broken mirror, as if we are Nakamoto ourselves and are seeing our fractured self reflected back at us.

That mirror imagery is so clearly conveyed, yet it is made up of a thousand minute technical choices, all of which together form the overall effect. Elsewhere in his works, Jones once again proves himself to be a master technical craftsman, a genius of many styles: Classical, Cubist, expressionist, Impressionist, video. A man after Picasso’s own heart. And never does he take himself overly seriously. There is, even here, reference to meme culture, the inclusion of campy elements, and even the overt comedy of Satoshi’s momentarily-smirking lips and eyebrows. 

But again, all of this conveys a sense of reflected identity, the kind of self-introspection that often accompanies long stares in the mirror. If this were a reflection of Satoshi looking back at himself, what does it say that the ensuing self is fractured into pieces, that it flies away and leaves the well-known master artist Picasso, or that it comes back and seems to be Vollard, a collector and purveyor who himself had quite a hand in Picasso’s success? There are many historical and psychological elements at play here. They would take a more knowledgeable historian, or a more trained psychologist, to unravel. I’m merely a chronicler: I write what I see, and what I see here is a technically-intricate portrayal of a man whom none of us actually know, who is represented as artist, as connoisseur, and as unwitting recipient of misplaced fame. Is this the Nakamoto that Jones is trying to reproduce? Perhaps! Or perhaps it’s just the one that I can recognize from the various pieces of this image I recognize and can internally reproduce. There is no Nakamoto; not in the traditional sense. He’s more myth than man, so he’d have to be made up of countless aspects and pieces. Jones captures each one, or as many as he can, with trademark style and impressive technical flourish. 

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