Clash of the Genres: Representational vs. Abstract Art
Spend enough time around generative art Twitter and you’ll hear a perennial complaint: representational work sells better than abstract work. There’s some truth to that claim. Strong representational projects often mint out in minutes, while many abstract projects end up burning half their editions or more.
A counter argument might point out that the top fifteen highest volume projects on fx(hash) each week are often evenly split between abstract and representational projects. By that metric, they seem on par. But calling that completely balanced would require a similarly even distribution in newly published projects, and abstract projects have historically made up a much larger portion of the work on the site than representational pieces, by a sizable margin.
And therein lies a key part of the issue: with so many abstract projects filling the explore page of fx(hash), the representational projects stand out because they look different from the majority of what’s there. It’s not that representational art is more memorable than abstract art, but that when placed next to this volume of abstract work it becomes unique and recognizable when compared to the work around it. Good representational art is rarer here, which collectors note and act accordingly.
But whenever a new landscape project mints out, a lot of ire gets thrown at collectors on Twitter and Discord for having immature taste. If only collectors had more refined palates, the tweets go, they would see the true value of abstract art; they would collect the Pollock instead of the Hopper, the Lammetje or the 0xm4_0 instead of the Zancan. But that’s a false dichotomy.
All of those artists make great, compelling work, and all of those artists have been heavily collected over the last year. Abstract work does sell and mint out — despite the pernicious narrative to the contrary.
One reason this narrative persists is because there’s so much abstract art on fx(hash) made by young creative coders at the beginning of their artistic journey. Their work needs work, you might say, and so it only sells editions in the single digits; they need time to develop a well-defined artistic voice, and the market can see they’re not there yet. And that’s ok. It’s wonderful and liberating that fx(hash) has removed so many barriers to releasing generative work and given young coders space to grow as artists.
But the fact so much novice work doesn’t sell says very little about the contrast between abstract and representational art. There’s no divide here — only glorious difference — and each kind of work is worth celebrating in its own right.
I personally find the success of representational art in the generative art space exciting. For nearly a century, representational art was largely overshadowed by abstract and conceptual work in the traditional art world (though there are, of course, exceptions!). But it’s been out of fashion for so long that it’s incredible to see it come back around and become popular again, and to find a burgeoning community in Web3 that responds to and celebrates representational art. It’s invigorating.
Perhaps some of the pearl clutching, the attempt to denigrate representational art in favor of abstraction, is because too many art teachers have for decades said that one type of art is superior to another — conceptual is king. But that’s gatekeeper thinking, and a holdover from an earlier era. Not every adage is true.
So in case no has told you this before: your taste is valid. You can refine and expand it, sometimes even stretch it, but in the blockchain’s continued democratization of art you get to like what you like and there’s nothing wrong with that.
That means we don’t have to listen to the fine art naysayers who proudly proclaim from their ivory Discord channels what’s good and bad. If you find art you like of any stripe, buy it, celebrate it, hang it on your wall (digital or otherwise), tell your friends about it, support the artist, talk about them on Twitter, donate to their Patreon, sign up for their newsletter. Build a connection there and eventually you’ll find other like-minded people who love the same kind of art too. No one can take that away from you.
Fractured Time
On a personal note, I dropped Fractured Time on fx(hash) a few weeks ago, my first generative project in almost four months. Yes, it’s abstract. Yes, it didn’t mint out; who knows why. Pick one up if you like the piece, or do it as a way to support my work with this newsletter, which takes dozens of hours to put together each month — that works too :)
fxGems is curated by @HaiverArt. Follow on Twitter for regular recommendations of other up-and-coming artists on (fx)hash.