- George Santayana sagely warned: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
- That truism applies to those who misunderstand and attack NFTs.
- As I explain in an Op-Ed published by the Chicago Tribune, a similar backlash met the advent of modern art, when, in the early 20th century, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque developed a radical new approach to art called Cubism.
- Instead of following the artistic convention of the Renaissance, Cubism obliterated it. But Cubism was so radical that many people considered it to be deranged and degenerate. The backlash lasted for decades, especially in the United States. The backlash tragically spread to Nazi Germany, which confiscated modern artworks as “degenerate art.”
- This important lesson of history helps us understand today’s backlash against NFTs. In my book Creators Take Control, I explain how Tokenism has created a new type of virtual ownership in digital and AI artworks. What Cubism did in radically transforming artistic perspective through “cubes,” Tokenism does today in radically transforming ownership of art and other subject matter through “tokens.” In so doing, it has ushered in a Virtual Renaissance, with an explosion of digital and AI art.
