Azbeen

There's some talk lately again about "The Lost Robbies" and about "history". And ok I get how they became hyped up and I would be supporting the hype too if the artist himself was still part of the crypto art scene or at least considered them an important step into a career in the broader art world. Also, if they hadn't been pumped so high back in 20 and 21 by -as it turned out- bad actors of the NFT space with proven motivations to scam others (pictured). The "Lost Robbies" just happen to be the first art minted on Superrare. That doesn't make them intrinsically culturally important nor the fact that they are created by early AI GANs. At least, for me, it shouldn't. The Lost Robbies become culturally valuable only when the NFT space as a whole is booming. Only in that context can they be seen as a digital collector's dream treasure hunt: The fact that some of them are "lost" makes them all more valuable. When in reality, this meant that everyone, from the artist, to Artnome, to the IRL collectors they were given for free didn't give a fuck for them or considered them important for years on end. To prove my point here's two examples: 1) Imagine being a real collector, and being given a drawing by "the next Picasso" for free and not even bothering to redeem it to look at the damn thing. What does that say about the art? 2) Imagine being an NFT artist and minting your collections with a 0 or a very low reserve ( 0.1 tezos for example). What does that say about the artist? IMHO the "lost part" should be a factor towards their devaluation and not the opposite but I can see how this "magical storytelling" by Artnome and other players helped weave an aura of special-ness for these works. The artist, Robbie Barrat has distanced himself from the NFT space even before the Beeple boom and he is still a young artist in his early 20s who may very well do something impressive and important in the future. When he made these, he was just a kid fucking around with early access GANs and the works themselves pale in comparison with anything by Midjourney or Stable diffusion. To his merit, he has distanced himself from all this BS-ers calling his work "grail" and pumping them to the moon. He himself is telling us "guys relax, they're not that great" and that he doesn't want to play the fake pump game. And instead of listening to him, they are telling him "shut up play by our rules and you might be rich beyond you wildest dreams otherwise GTFO" and at that point he is giving them the finger. What we have here is a perfect example of what the irl superstar painter Adrian Ghenie mentioned in an interview: that once your art is trading in the auction houses, it takes a life of its own, it's a bit like a revenge porn movie with you in it circulating on the internet. You can't do anything about it, you can't take it down, you aren't making big money out of it, so you just have to accept the fact and move on to other things, more relevant to you and to the world, as I believe we should all do and not throw any more money at those works.