Art, Community and NFTs
— Originally published in International Paneling in 2021
It’s been over a year since I minted my first NFT, and, in that time, the space has evolved dramatically. And that might be an understatement — one could argue that the explosive NFT space is the most rapidly developing sector of the world economy. If crypto is the fastest growing financial sector, and NFTs and the metaverse are the fastest growing areas of crypto, this actually stands to reason.
One of the biggest, and perhaps most interesting, things that I’ve learned as I became involved with NFTs is the importance of community. At first I didn’t quite realize this and found it went a little against my ethos — I didn’t become an artist to try to please people and be accepted by society; rather, it was something that I was simply called to do (as many artists will tell you), whether by nature or by some deep fixation in my psyche.
Nevertheless, as a result of my interest in crypto, I became more and more aware over time of the existence of a very strong NFT community, which is an inseparable part of the crypto community that lives on Twitter (sometimes referred to as CT, or Crypto Twitter). Many newcomer artists to the NFT space, particularly those from the gallery scene, often don’t understand the fact that many NFT collectors reside on Twitter, a social media outlet that most of them completely ignore in favour of Instagram, where most of the traditional art world resides.
However, if you’re interested in making sales, getting involved in the community, i.e. Crypto Twitter, is essential. And further, don’t expect to be welcomed in right away either. I’ve been involved for a year and have only made a few ‘friends’. The pioneers in the space are generally suspicious of newcomers — many assume you’re simply there for the money (how dare you!) and so are slow to accept new people. But, nevertheless, participating in the space and buying NFTs yourself go a long way toward establishing credibility. And it’s actually quite a cool thing — when you sell a work, it’s nice to spread the wealth around by buying the work of another artist. As I like to say, “Buying NFTs is good for the soul.” It’s part of the ethos of the space, and it’s quite charming. It really does build community.
But that leaves me wondering, what does creating community have to do with making art? These are completely different skills. Van Gogh and 95% of the canon would have failed as artists if community was a core requirement for their art to succeed. I can hear it now, “Do I have to become an expert on building community, as well?” But, to be fair, we could say this is just as true of the traditional art world. You can make brilliant paintings, but if you don’t have collectors (i.e. community), then life can be difficult. Removing galleries from the equation does have a cost, as building community around artists was their primary role in the traditional art world.
And community also explains why projects like Bored Apes Yachtclub (a Profile Picture Project, or PFP) do so well. Many people are unimpressed by the art and are mystified at their high sales prices ($100,000+), but what people don’t understand is that these are fundamentally community projects and that the art, at least in some cases, really is secondary. Many of these NFT collections have utility, with exclusive access to events IRL (in real life) and even tokens that are awarded to holderson a daily basis, which have nothing to do with the art itself. As a matter of fact, I would argue that there’s a confusion in the NFT scene right now between digital art and utility based tokenized JPGs. I expect this all to be sorted out over time, but it’s leaving a lot of traditional art world people completely mystified by a project like Bored Apes, which, as a result, turns them off NFTs.
With galleries being edged out (at least for now), building community will impact your sales, and hence your livelihood as an artist, so it’s something to keep in mind. Looking into the future, I can imagine a world where each artist has a Discord (an app designed to host communities) and far more involvement on Twitter. (Yes, more things to be an expert in.) The NFT story is not going away, much to the disappointment of many, so artists will likely be forced to figure out once again how they can strategically develop their communities online. It’s only become more important over time.
