Here you have a Greek tragedy of a downward spiral in art, culminating in a work being sold by a horse-era institution, propped up by 100 years of destructive philosophy, confirmed shadow games since the 1940s, recent inflationary money printing, and blatant one-sided activism. It’s worth stepping back to see the big picture.
Maybe there is more to it all. Something even those directly involved are not even considering to be a thing. This “full circle” above refers to how seemingly progressive ideas are actually about selling the future in a desperate attempt to save the past, and control the present. Much like printing money at the expense of future generations, the fiat era of money is still in full swing in art. The Great Contemporary Art Bubble was a revelation when I first saw it at the start of my career in art in 2008.
This article offers an alternative perspective to the popular banana show recently dominating the web3 art internet. It’s a big “what if”?
If you can be truthful, brave, and funny—say, in the spirit of Joe Rogan—you might get some things wrong, but this article has plenty most have never considered to be a part of the art world. My intent is to be as fair as possible, and to continue saving art from the last hundred years of agendas that no longer serve it, especially in today’s world where decentralisation tools can invite everyone excluded into the party-this being nearly the whole population of the earth right now.
Setting the stage:
First off, SuperRare has done a great service to the digital art community in impressive numbers of art sold, and development in the scene through their DAO, keeping the creator resale royalties under pressure, and fighting for the scene to become a thing among the first in the game. Watch this interview by the founders to get a deep dive into their perspective on the Dinis Guarda show. Thousands of artists will likely speak positively about the whole thing. So what gives? In short, the corporate mindset leading art, once again. This is not about SuperRare alone, but the whole company scene that emerged, and something that is personal to me about it all as well.
As per the selected fifteen bananas, the dilemma of SuperRare is obvious. You can’t outshine the lame duck pre-internet paradigm banana, and the bureaucratic class, so their curator team is stuck choosing the upper end of what can be politically business wise tolerated. That ends up being not much, while they sell the future down the polluted river.
“A tragedy is a literary, theatrical, or dramatic work that typically depicts the downfall of a central character, often due to a combination of their own flaws (such as hubris, greed, or ambition) and external forces (such as fate, societal pressures, or the actions of others). Tragedy is characterized by serious themes and often evokes feelings of pity and fear in the audience, culminating in catharsis—a purging or emotional release.”
Or actually just..
I’m Potency
No one likes critique it feels ick, but without it the whole world becomes no rizz.
I haven’t really participated in an ‘art submission competition,’ perhaps ever, as I’m a bit old-school and view it much like Prince might have viewed the rise of TV singing contests. He felt the process and commerce of it killed authenticity in the artist, and wasn’t wrong. In comparison to the music roster we had until about 2000, we live in a post music world now. However, the endless corruption symbolised by the duct-taped banana artwork, colliding with a SR competition, prompted me to enter.
“In I’m-Potency, artist VESA presents a sharp satire on Western society’s spiritual flaccidity. By replacing Adam’s reaching finger with a limp, taped banana—a nod to Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian—this piece reflects the decay of a culture that once held itself as a beacon of enlightenment but has now veered into absurdity. Michelangelo’s Adam famously reaches toward God with a finger that isn’t fully extended, symbolizing humanity’s hesitation and the delicate gift of free will. In this reimagining, Adam’s once-restrained reach becomes even more compromised, transformed into a limp banana pointing downward. It’s as if Western culture, once brimming with creative potential, is now resigned to existential apathy, unable or unwilling to reach for anything beyond itself.”
That is just the start of the text ending in this:
The post tagged the new head of digital assets in Sotheby’s, the auction house, as well as SR.
Read the full context of the submission substance here
See the selected, eventually 15 artworks considered more worthy by the SR curation team
Of course, it was not selected. The most amazing thing about my submission piece “I’m Potency” not selected to the SR banana competition finals was that I am an actually censored artist, making a case on how art has been censored by the postmodernists for over a hundred years, writing the whole thing out crystal clear, but I got censored again out of the show by those who were meant to build the free infrastructure. What we have here, is an illusion of choice. A combination of a totalitarian philosophy, coupled with an illusion of options.
This is made obvious by the objectively much less substance or vision pieces selected over mine with a topic of censorship. More on this a bit later, but you will see it at the very least, vindicates my point that shadow games beyond merit and substance are going on inside of the web3 art world, much like in the legacy art as well.
Pissing on traditional values for a hundred years
In the art world, the war on conservatism began over a century ago with Duchamp’s satire and shock artwork, The Fountain (1917). Duchamp claimed his six-dollar urinal entry piece singled how “art has lost all of its credibility.” Ironically, it sank art even lower from a certain perspective. Fast-forward a hundred years to The Comedian and it seems no amount of bubble gum in the form of “substance” can satiate the post-MTV generations.
If something had already been done with far more punch a century ago, eroding standards in a meaningful way at the time, then today’s attempts are pure LARPing. Sotheby’s, in this context, is not worthy of the reverence it once commanded—especially when their head of digital assets, Michael Bouhanna, calls The Comedian “the most significant work of the 21st century.” Very little of course about this is about art, as most of it is money, power and potentially continued societal agency subversion.
Jonathan Haidt’s research on disgust sensitivity is fascinating. He discovered that conservatives have a much more heightened sense of disgust when boundaries are broken, as well as a greater need for physical cleanliness. In contrast, this is not a high priority for liberals or libertarians. Naturally, those with no boundaries are easier to subvert for whatever cause. Fobia means An intense, irrational fear or aversion to a specific object, situation, or activity that is often disproportionate to the actual danger posed. This is not the same as disgust, which is an emotional response of strong aversion or revulsion to something perceived as unpleasant, offensive, or morally unacceptable. This part is less discussed in this context.
“KISS”
My second inspired banana, which I did not submit to the contest.
So returning to the Pollock paradigm and how he was a darling of the alphabet agencies, with the CIA entering the art world as far back as the 1940s to combat the rise of communism. Leftist artists were propped up to showcase American exceptionalism. Selling the idea of a cocaine-laced drink and “do what you feel like” freedom to American youth and elites wasn’t a hard pitch compared to glorifying Soviet despots who demanded hard work as well as to be elevated to Godlike status.
Read the full context of the “Kiss” artwork
Most know of course the famous Kiss by Gustav Klimt, and how combining the CIA logo and the idiot banana in this context is at least a chuckle, if not a profound question mark on the last 80 years of our understanding of art.
This isn’t conspiracy theory—it’s conspiracy fact. It’s also worth noting that the term “conspiracy theorist” was invented by the CIA as a derogatory label to discredit those questioning their activities, a tactic that gained traction after the JFK assassination. This will be relevant later when discussing how RFK has now been elected as part of the new U.S. cabinet. Conspiracy theories have been around pre-internet, took the internet by storm, and are completely invisible to the art world. This is because there is no right wing thought in the space what so ever. Sure there is cooky thing from flat earth to what ever, but there are legitimate conspiracies proven true that are fascinating. There are no gallery artworks making any waves? Not a single openly conservative artist anyone knows? Seems natural.
Some of you might also be familiar with the famous interviews of Yuri Bezmenov, the defected KGB spy, who outlined how demoralization was part of their plan to take down the U.S. government. If you ask me, the demoralization he described has only ramped up since the 1980s, fueled by postmodern values and the fiat-funded war on conservative ideals and God—or whatever God represents as a symbol of natural order to be discovered rather than manipulated into existence. His “useful idiot” term helps us see many players in art in a different light.
Eric Weinstein gives some indication with his Kayfabe concept to where we might be today. Here are parts 2 & 3
The art world, which has been playing with our collective subconscious for a 100 years, is in deep need of an audit by a character like Elon Musk with his DOGE crew of Vivek, RFK and Trump. Wouldn’t that be something?
You also need me on Rogan going a three hour round to talk about this all. This is why I made the Department of Artistic Freedom. It’s an open invitation to the first 100 builders resonating with this idea, and available on Ador for 369k sats- a nod to Tesla. Buy it if you want to support the cause like that, but I care mostly that the mentality spreads. You don’t have to join to start making the new direction happen. Just choose to do your own exploration without censoring yourself constantly.
It will be a think tank for liberty minded artists, and the function will first be to come to the aid of artists who are being ignored despite obvious merit and substance, as well as facing some form of cancellation for BS reasons.
Given the massive push by governments, media, and activists for the LGBT+ community not long ago, how can we be certain that the art aspect wasn’t a similar operation to the one carried out with Jackson Pollock back in the day? Be so free that no boundary of physical reality can hold you back. Simultaneously, everyone raising their voice will be canceled, and most will be incentivized to stay quiet.
I’m not saying it was—I’m saying that, knowing all we now know, we can’t be sure. And those involved publicly might not have any idea this was the case. Least of all Fewocious, so crytal clear, I am not accusing Fewo, SupeRare, nor Sotheby’s of anything. This is about something much bigger and the sum of the parts.
Beeple’s “Cross Road” sold for 6.6M at Sothebys earlier
$17 Million Realized in Sotheby’s First NFT Sale with Digital Creator Pak
Postmodern pump:
The same question certainly applies to Pak, Beeple, and many others who used late-stage postmodernism expressions as their vehicle of communication. Much was fitting to the agenda of end stage postmodernism in NFTs.
From the Twitter files, we know for a fact that deboosting and amplifying messages were actively managed, and merit was certainly not at the top of the food chain in the selection process. The real question seemed to be: What can we push and get away with? This approach fit the degen agenda perfectly. It is difficult to sell high level art to an audience that can’t read it. This has been the argument of culture critic Camille Paglia.
Again, I am not accusing any artist, gallery or auction house. This is mere opinion and speculation on big philosophy waves as well as the continued erosion of substance in art. In podcasting, this kind of speculation has been normal for a long time, but not in art, for some reason.
Also, this has nothing to do with hating any group within postmodernism. It has everything to do with the manipulative individuals working behind the scenes to activate and suppress ideas according to power plays and political agendas. People like James Lindsay have committed significant parts of their lives to try to figure this all out.
Some will accuse me of being jealous of other people’s success. While I certainly feel that more financial success would help, if finances were my first priority, this would not have consistently been my focus—to save art from postmodernism—for seven years publicly now. Otherwise, we have continued regress as progress, and a world in general, in inverse mode.
When any artist does well, I’m genuinely happy for them. Artists aren’t usually known for achieving major success, as megastardom has often required aligning with various agendas rather than relying solely on the strength of the art itself to reach stratospheric heights. We can’t fix any of this unless it’s at least discussed.
How differently does this all make us view what was going on before, as well as what might be going on now?
The dignified bananas.
Here are also some other entries that I figured were worthy of attention. Some not submitted to the competition, as understandably people with dignity don’t submit work to be evaluated by clowns, and they have been increasingly disappointed by the quality of curation since the early days. My post started with how I don’t do this, and unleashed as much fire as I can toward the whole system, stress testing it to see if I was correct – and it absolutely turned out to be the case.
Banana Zone by Norman Harman
Norman Harman is one of the most interesting voices in web3. To me, the consumerist era has been gone for 20 years already, but his critique of the bureaucratic class with his new series, as well as an avalanche of dirty little bitch slaps to the auction champagne crew, has been a breath of fresh air in the scene. The new AI motion work is dope too. Both capture perfectly the orgiastic degeneracy scene of this auction vibe. Norman, like many other OGs, wouldn’t “submit” work to a contest like this anymore, having been disillusioned from the scene already many times over.
“RARE In The Machine” by Spaced Painter
Spaced Painter did her literal submission with this piece, in which the banana fucks her into oblivion, and she metaphorically gives up due to being sidelined and ignored. That makes her Rare. It was visionary, as her being left out of the ten selected, gave her exactly that. The piece illustrates well on how the demoralising effect of 100 years of postmodernism is having on the spiritually minded, and just anyone with common sense anymore, and it is so obvious that we can make super predictive art about it.
ROBNESS – I AM BANANA
The “I Am Banana” by Robness is a parody take of Kevin Abosch’s I Am a Coin project already from 2019 minted on Superrare. How can you go lower than the banana? Well just put tape on tape and watch the yellow paint dry. At least that’s my interpretation.
The competition set up by another crypto art enfant terrible, Maxis Osiris, has put together a parody auction competition to parody the parody auction competition parodying the parody auction. Alotta Money would be proud. Like Alan Watts said earlier that academia and religion has become but a foot note on a foot note, the direct experience is “access denied”, so the Farisejan and the money changers can keep doing their thing.
“I’ll die on this lid” by Max Osiris
We had a nice convo with my friend Nicolaas on all the of above and more on Bitcoin LIVE, but I wasn’t yet unfortunately aware of the selected bananas then. What ever last remaining hopium I had for the early stage platforms died the next day, hence I got motivated to write this article.
Artist extraordinaire ANDRÉS DEL VECCHIO curated a much better selection of bananas from the litter on his X, so leaving that here for you to evaluate in case you don’t have time to go thought the 1100 entries yourself.
It took a child to point to the nude emperor that he had been conned. In art, it has lasted a hundred years.
The measure of intelligence is the ability to change. – Albert Einstein
They are laughing at us. Our creative generative power. We need to understand this.
While an Einstein quote is a tough one to do without seeming pretentious, in the above context it works. If you work with truth, even the setbacks help you rise. We need to stop focusing on the fall. Artists are creators, and we are currently being completely under served by trying to be under the thumb of the destroyers. This is all the postmodernists can do, and by doing garbage bananas, you are submitting to being reduced further and further. Start building the future. Make your own gallery. Band together. Don’t submit to the bureaucrats that run the establishment. We are artists. We are powerful. it’s cool. Old things and people die. Let them.
As you can tell, there has been a lot of wtf going on here. Remember, I was building this, this and this, as well as speaking on big stages when everything flies off the shelves and for me nothing moved.
Despite it all, find gratitude. It’s a lifeline. There is plenty to be grateful for, but step out of harms way. Remember why you got into this in the first place.
If you want to support my efforts, do consider collecting these pieces from my SR page. It’s unlikely that they will age badly. I’m happy to give the platform fee back to SR, as those guys, despite my poor sales, still airdropped me comfort tokens when SUPR was launched for being there early. There was some respect there at least still then.
Unfortunately, I can’t help but wonder, in recent light, how much my art not reaching people there despite significant effort, was artificially suppressed. Maybe not at all by them, but who knows. I still have a bunch of art there that cost me a bomb to mint, so hoping all my efforts with SR and for this scene will be acknowledged at some point. Writing and researching this article took a week, and I was not paid to do it. I’m either brave and pricipled, or a complete idiot. Hard to tell which one sometimes. Bit of both, I guess.
Collect
The NFT includes a physical canvas print, painted on top with acrylics, and it launches an AR animation.
Available for 3 ETH
The NFT includes a physical canvas print, painted on top with acrylics, and it launches an AR animation.
Available for 3 ETH
Stay cool,
VESA
Crypto Artist, Speaker, Consultant, Writer
All links to physical, NFTs, and more below