The Art of Good Taste

From 6-9 November, Art on Tezos: Berlin hosted an amazing, diverse set of voices to discuss the question of taste when applied to digital art. The panel was moderated by Fanny Lakoubay, who has been a cheerleader for digital and on-chain art for the decade that I’ve known her. She also represents 100 Collectors, one of the partners for the 3-day event. 

The speakers included Adrian Pocobelli, whose Artist Journal streams provide in-depth commentary on artists working across the blockchain; Danielle King, an artist, writer, and curator who is also Head of Community at Right Click Save magazine, which is a media partner of ours; and Giannis Sourdis, one of the most thoughtful OG collectors in the crypto space who has acquired some of the pioneering work across Tezos while supporting emerging artists around the world. 

— Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, Head of Arts at Trilitech

‍Fanny Lakoubay: Taste is a very elusive and highly subjective term. Everyone has their own taste, and it doesn’t only depend on what you’re looking at but on your context, story, and feelings. One definition of “taste” is “the ability to make valid judgments about an object’s aesthetic value. However these judgments are deficient in objectivity, which is the paradox of taste.” In the traditional art world, there are codes and there are people we listen to who are supposed to establish what good taste might be: curators, museums, galleries, market prices, etc. 

All the online articles about developing your taste in art are always the same: “go to museums, look at as much art as you can, and so on.” But in the end, it always ends with something like: “trust your guts.”

In the wonderful world of Web3 that we live in, we still have that — we have exhibitors, galleries, and curators — so we haven’t thrown the baby out with the bathwater, but it’s also quite confusing because there are new platforms, new technologies, as well as more fluid roles. People in the traditional art world might call us up for conflicts of interest: “How can you be an artist, collector, and a curator?” We can take that closed-up approach, or we can view Web3 as refreshing and exciting and consider how it might actually change things. 

When was the last time things actually changed in the art world? Even if all the promises of the blockchain, such as decentralized tastemaking, haven’t been realized yet, we are on an exciting path to developing new ways to collect and to enjoy art. All three of our panellists here have different roles in the digital art ecosystem: from artist and podcast host to collector and investor, and I’d like to first know where things started for each of you: what was your first art purchase, which art or artist did you first come across, and how did you discover it?

‍Danielle King: I had a really great shepherd into this world, Jason Bailey, also known as Artnome: an OG who has been collecting digital art for a long time. Before I started working with him at ClubNFT in 2021, I had been working at MoMA for nearly a decade, and I really didn’t know anything about NFTs or blockchain at all. I was snobby about it, thinking: “I don’t know. Isn’t that just monkeys?” He said, “No, no, no, there’s real art.”

Jason kindly explained blockchain to me along with some of the history of digital art, then patiently helped me set up a wallet and sent me some Tezos. We did a Zoom call and he walked me through [the platform] Hic Et Nunc. 

I was like, “This is kind of chaotic. I don’t know how to find things here.” His response was, “If you see something you like then collect it, but, either way, see what that artist collects.” That was an entryway for me.

The first thing I collected was a work by Marcelo Soria Rodríguez that reminded me of Sonia Delaunay. But it was made with code, and I thought, “Wow, that’s crazy.” That opened up a whole new world for me. Then I looked at his wallet and what he collected, went down the rabbit hole and never came back. Then, begrudgingly, I started a Twitter account and started following people there. That was my way in. I finally started minting my own work as an artist while doing some curating and writing on Right Click Save.

‍Adrian Pocobelli: I was a digital artist trying to figure out how to sell my work before NFTs, and it was always about making it physical. I applied for SuperRare because I could tell that there was a tsunami coming. Luckily, I got on, which was awesome. I started minting work, but I didn’t really believe in the technology or the value. 

I was still skeptical. I thought, “If you guys want to give me $250 bucks for a JPEG, that’s fine with me.” [Laughs] Actually, Giannis was the first person ever to bid for my work.

Later, in December 2021, I discovered Tezos and put up a few works right after Hic Et Nunc went down. It was February 2022 when I started realizing, within all the chaos — which can feel garish for new people — that’s when I discovered Rata on Ethereum, and realized he also had work on Tezos. I then discovered hAyDiRoKeT’s work as well as his collection. I discovered the Kurt Hustle Collective and all these incredible artists that way.

After maybe six to eight months of selling my work on SuperRare, I got converted into buying myself. That was the “aha” moment when I, the artist, was thankful — I had that relationship and that experience, with the work in my wallet. With crypto, you don’t really understand it until you do it. It’s the same thing with buying digital art. Two paradigm shifts are required there.

‍Giannis Sourdis: I got into crypto in 2016, just trading and investing in ICOs (initial coin offerings). It wasn’t until 2019 that I collected my first physical art piece — a work by Trevor Jones — which was “crypto art” in the sense that it was art that had to do with crypto. I then collected two physical pieces by Pascal Boyart that had to do with Bitcoin. 

I was a Bitcoin maximalist and I still am when it has to do with financial freedom and being your own bank. I wanted to have something in my house that represented what I believed in. That’s why I first collected art.

Fast forward to 2020, I had put some money in the coin of Rarible, which did very well in “DeFi summer”. I thought I would reinvest some of the profits back into the platform, so I started collecting meme art, glitch art, Trash Art — very much in line with the crypto ethos and culture. I discovered so many different platforms: SuperRare, Nifty Gateway, Async Art, MakersPlace, and eventually Art Blocks. Then, a few years later, Tezos as well. That’s it in a nutshell.

‍FL: You have all been in the Web3 space for a while but I don’t want people who arrived later to leave with the feeling that it’s too late because they were not here at the beginning. For those who are discovering blockchain-based art now, it can be confusing and overwhelming to find art they like or to go through the volume of works published on different platforms. At the same time, one criticism we often hear is that it’s always the same four digital artists featured in every exhibition. For other artists, it’s very hard to cut through the noise to collectors. How has your taste, and the way you collect, evolved over time? ‍

GS: One of the turning points in my collecting journey was spending a lot of money at the time — far more than I had ever envisaged spending on an NFT — on FVCKRENDER’s genesis on SuperRare. That unlocked me to start spending more money on collecting art. Then Art Blocks happened, which is how I discovered generative art. 

I researched the origins of generative art, which led me to AI art. But throughout my whole collecting journey, I was always open to collecting whatever was interesting to me aesthetically, conceptually, and in terms of innovation. My taste evolved over time, and even if I had more of a focus on generative art, I was not exclusive to that. 

I never collected with the prospect of making money. It was more: “I want to collect this, this is what speaks to me, I want to support this individual.” Often one of the most important criteria is whether I think this person is a good person. If so, I want to support them and help them continue what they are doing.

Of course, if we’re talking about spending more than, let’s say, $1,000, then you do have to think about it as an investment as well. Then the question becomes: does this artist have longevity? 

‍DK: I have a lot of artists that I follow, and not just to see their new work, but to see what they collect. Honestly, Adrian’s Artist Journal is a real money suck for me, because I want everything. I try not to watch it if I’m trying not to spend any money. The shows cover so many great artists and a lot of things that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Sadly, I’m on Twitter [now X] all the time, seeing things and bookmarking them. If an artist is new to me, I will go back and look at them later. 

I collect all sorts of different things. Generative art is how I started, mostly on fx(hash) and Objkt. But then I started collecting collages, photography, GIFs, and AI art. The question is: does it move me? Is it doing something interesting? Do I want to support this artist? 

I view my collection as a small-scale form of patronage that helps other artists to continue to do their work.

I have a real bent towards women artists and LGBTQIA+ artists, as well as artists from beyond North America and Europe. Obviously, I collect from those regions as well. But, for me, if I can invest a little bit of money in someone and that lets them continue to make art, that feels really good. I like to build relationships with artists, and it feels good to be the first to collect a piece from a series and then that drives other sales for the artist.

‍AP: I think that history is important and whether a work is part of a conversation or tradition within the visual arts, however loosely you might define that. Process is important to me, as is whether a work is commenting on the technology or its own creation. Does it have self-consciousness as a work of art? Finally, style, or what I loosely call “intellectual style.” 

Those three things together — history, process, and style — are the magic mix for me. If you have all three, then it’s hard for me not to like it.‍

FL: I’d like to close our discussion by reflecting on the philosophical concept of “taste”. Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, stated that there is no “good taste”, only “class taste” — in other words, for him, taste depended on the class that you belonged to. We’ve mentioned Twitter here, and I wonder whether we might even say that “class taste” has been replaced by “algorithmic taste”. It’s very hard to make judgments based on what one sees on one’s Twitter feed, which is optimized for Western users and mostly shows artworks from Europe or the US rather than those from Latin America or Asia. But we all came to the blockchain based on various promises, including the removal of gatekeeping, and we all believe in that because we’re here. But I don’t think we’ve made it yet. What one change would you like to see in Web3 to fulfill its promises? ‍

DK: That’s a big one. The Twitter algorithm has definitely gotten worse since I joined. Back in 2021 and 2022, I was seeing the art of everyone I follow, which is a very diverse group of people. Now it’s showing me garbage. Artists who I love will do a drop, and I’ll have no idea about it even though they’ve posted about it repeatedly. That is definitely a challenge.

There is also a disconnect between Twitter and live events like this, which are so great and build new connections, friendships, and possible collaborations. That is so important, but it’s also not financially possible for a lot of people to attend events like this. 

I would love to see some sort of fund or non-profit that offers travel grants for artists from around the world to make it to events like this.

‍AP: There is a kind of reigning narrative on what is considered significant when you look at crypto X [formerly Twitter]. You see it in the Taschen book, On NFTs (2024) as well. There is an unavoidability to that kind of centralization. What is the way around that? I think it’s a diversity of voices. As an artist, one way to promote decentralization is to be decentralized in your own actions. It’s not just one platform or blockchain. It’s about experimenting with many blockchains and doing many things.‍

GS: I agree 100%. The Twitter algorithm is completely broken, [and] I will never see what I really want if I don’t search for it actively. But that is also where our space almost exclusively markets and sells things, which is sad. You need to be active there in order to find or sell work.

One thing that needs to change is the phenomenon whereby a big herd follows certain people who don’t have any real art collecting credentials. They just have money and a loud voice. But, for some reason, that automatically means that they have taste or know what they’re talking about.

During the last bull run, most people wanted to make money, so they were opportunists. But most people weren’t here for the art or because they actually cared about collecting it. They wanted to make money so they followed people who guided them in what to buy. They wanted to, as we say, pump their bags. I don’t know how easily that will change when it’s the same small group of people supporting artists and buying art. ‍

FL: We don’t simply want to reproduce the traditional art world by selling crypto art at auction houses, but we also need to work with the establishment while building these new systems. It’s tricky to define things while they are happening, but our presence here at Art on Tezos: Berlin is proof that there is a third way.