The art market’s “Ratatouille” moment — anyone can cook up NFTs
Even before the NFT craze took off, online retailing signalled an art boom with the idea anyone can make art. Nevertheless, the spark lay outside of technology, as this explosive twenty-first century phenomenon was actually ignited at the very beginnings of Modernity. Just over one hundred years ago a French artist living in the USA presented a urinal as an entry for an exhibition in New York. The piece was signed R. Mutt 1917, but the artist was in reality Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), a member of the European avant-garde that also spawned the painter Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). Picasso’s slightly earlier Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) had already offered an image of fragmented reality, shattering the perception of ideal beauty and unified composition. These artworks challenged the very notion of what art is, and even who can advertise themselves as artists.
Both these artworks were turning points, calling into question just how much training an “artist” might need. In fact Mutt’s efforts were rejected, and the work was not included, but defenders nevertheless called Duchamps’ piece “art”.
‘Mr Mutt’s fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a bathtub is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers’ shop windows. Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view — created a new thought for that object.’ [1]
With it’s now ironically polite title, Duchamp’s Fountain swept away the notion that artists required arduous training and skill. Indeed, the notion became artists didn’t need any training at all. So, like the rat from the animated film Ratatouille, who embodied the maxim “anyone can cook”, the art world caved to the sentiment “anyone can make art”.
However, it is never as simple as it is simple. Although anyone who can make “art” can now reach directly to anyone who wants to buy “art”, the reality is who is making the “art” has become more important that what the art is. In a way Duchamp’s posturing has led to the inverse of his own aims. Duchamp was a trained artist, so his claim with “Fountain” was his right to make art by virtue of his qualifications. As a visual artist he could choose and decide what art is. His signature gave artistic value to a utilitarian article.
Now, as the third decade of the twenty-first century gets underway, the notion of a “trained visual artist” has fallen away entirely and in place is the trained something else … the sportsman, the actor, the musician, the performer. Everyone is jumping onboard “making visual art”, made even easier with the boom in NFTs. “Artists” can use computer generated graphics (clipart or even hijacked images) and stamp “art” out at the click of a button. How will the discipline of art history make any sense of this? Anyone who can make art, and that is anyone with a computer, can sell art to anyone who wants to buy it. The reality is however, that once that first sale is complete, what happens next is a blur.