Art is the ultimate storyteller, one of the most important aspects of culture as a universal language, and an expression of our deepest human nature. Its forms can evolve and change exponentially over short periods, often sparked throughout history by external stressors as each new generation adds its unique perspectives and interpretations.
It is both an evolutionary and a revolutionary process: a transport mechanism allowing new ideas and perspectives to be introduced, explored, and shared.
There is an adage that states “ninety-percent of everything is crud”. It was coined by Theodore Sturgeon, an American science fiction author and critic, and was inspired by his observation that, while science fiction was often derided for its low quality by critics, most work in other fields was also of low quality, and so science fiction was thus no different. The Sturgeon Law was later more harshly known to imply that 95% of everything is shit.
In that spirit, definitions of “art” shift and go through phases, and always exist somewhat in the eye of the beholder – no more so than in derivative works. Andy Warhol pioneered modern art derivatives, and while many have followed, and few have been as celebrated, it is as old as art itself. Art derivative works can be as simple as making a cheaper alternative for those without the means to pay for original pieces, to the more creative expressions of using images on furniture, clothing, and handbags, to the more esoteric of transforming the original piece’s image to convey or look like something entirely different.
What Makes A Derivative Resonate And Avoid Sturgeon’s Law?
The Colored Mona Lisa, signed and dated “’Andy Warhol 1963′ (on the reverse) silkscreen inks and graphite on canvas,” last sold for USD 56 million at Christie’s in 2015. He was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s.
Marcel Duchamp gives yet another take on the Mona Lisa, L.H.O.O.Q. (1919) (far right image below). Conceived in 1919 the work is one of what Duchamp referred to as “readymades”, which challenged the very definition of art by taking mundane, often cheap everyday objects, manipulating them very little, and presenting them as works of art. At the most basic level he was trolling the art market hard with this postcard reproduction of the Mona Lisa onto which he drew a moustache and beard in pencil and appended a cryptic but racy title L.H.O.O.Q. (in French èl ache o o qu). It is a pun, since the letters when pronounced in French form the sentence “Elle a chaud au cul”, which can be roughly translated as “she has a hot ass”.
Everything is a derivative work to some extent and Duchamp is no exception here. In 1883 Eugène Bataille, better known under his pseudonym Arthur Sapeck, created a Mona Lisa smoking a pipe. He was part of the Parisian Arts Incohérents, a short-lived French art movement which opposed conventional art, and is seen as the immediate predecessor of Dadaism. Sapeck considered it an “augmented” work, slapped the title Le Rire to it (meaning “Laughter”) (center image below), had it published as an illustration in Coquelin cadet’s book Le Rire in 1887, and accompanied it by the following text (english version below):
"This is a masterpiece depicting a woman of striking beauty. Imagine for a moment that, by chance, the master has left in the mouth of this ideal beauty, a cheeky pipe -.. You laugh. For the eyes. "
“If anyone had told Leonardo that 500 years after his death, his portrait would be the most famous painting in the world, he’d have thought the notion mad.”
What would you think of Bataille’s, Duchamp’s, or Warhol’s recreations of the Mona Lisa if you had never been exposed to it before? Would you find them funny? Is it art? Maybe you would find the idea of multiple pictures of the same woman, altered ever so slightly, as ridiculously lowbrow. In reality, those three images can exist only because of Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci’s 16th century work (far left image above) (now priceless). Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world”.
Would Duchamp Dream of Code Eating Algorithms?
Art is often about pushing boundaries. With the advent of the internet, we’ve seen a whole new world of art forms emerge. One of the most exciting and controversial art forms to come out of the digital age is the non-fungible token, or NFT. NFTs are a type of cryptocurrency that can be used to represent ownership of digital assets. They’re unique, they’re immutable, and they’re quickly gaining popularity in the art world. Some people see them as a revolutionary new way to trade art, while others deep in the crypto bear market view them as the latest gimmick. But whether you love them or hate them, there’s no denying that NFTs are having a major impact on the art world.
Wiiides is a generative conceptual NFT artwork developed by Sterling Crispin as part of NotAudited.xyz released in 2022 and considered a derivative work based upon CryptoPunks. Wiiides seeks to blur the lines between an original and a derivative, and we think it has succeeded.
Fully on-chain, the artworks exist as parasites on the Ethereum blockchain. Using data directly from the CryptoPunks contract, Wiiides programmatically edits the data based on the growth rate of each Wiiide and the number of transfers, for all 10,000 original CryptoPunk images to make them grow wider and wider over time. The resulting pieces are both absurd and beautiful, and offer a new perspective on the role of smart contracts in the art world.
Punk 6512 used here as we owned the derivative but we murdered a few images by transferring before updating metadata… oops
The Emphasis of the Horizontal Plane
The thing about Wiiides is that they are wiiiiiiiide. They appear reminiscent of abstract paintings, composites of a limited color range of free form rectangular shapes, but vibrate a feeling of existence that predominantly resides in the horizontal plane. When we at CC started looking at Wiiides we started seeing all sorts of architecture that “appeared wiiiiiiiide”.
That rabbit hole led us to El Lissitzky, who in the 1920s developed and proposed the idea of horizontal skyscapers — Wolkenbügels, or “cloud-irons” — eight structures intended for the Boulevard Ring in Moscow. His logic was that as long as humans could not fly, moving horizontally was natural, and moving vertically was not.
For all their progressive modernity, the skyscrapers were, in the end, not built. “Our mistake,” El Lissitzky recalled, “was that we wanted to move straight to a technology that did not exist yet – I wanted to create an architecture that broke free of its foundations and soared in the air defying the force of gravity.” In other words, it was an idea whose time had not yet come.
Choose Your Own Path
Sterling Crispin is an artist who is embracing this new medium. His work here focuses on creating by destroying something that is meant to be immutable and valuable, breaking free of its contract foundations (CryptoPunk’s floor price of 65.47 ETH on 3rd Dec. 2022 vs Wiiides’ 0.005 ETH). Whether you love his work or hate it, there’s no denying that he’s a pioneer of the digital realm.
Everything is a derivative work to some extent and these concepts and bodies of work are an important part of contemporary art. What matters is whether we put enough of our own creativity into the process to render it different enough that the new dominates the source – more often than not, the timing of the derivative as set within the cultural period strengthens or weakens the visual impact and its cultural resonance. All too often we find critics and haters suffering from “thintelligence”… all too easy to confine art to decades and centuries of consensus. We challenge you to think “wiiide” and decide for yourself what is the art of today.
For us Art is not a thing — this is the way.
