Art can be an emotional trigger for larger and deeper dialogues. It can blur the boundaries between things, the boundaries between us and the boundaries between the world and self. Still we rarely see art and economy as subjects deeply unified in the same study or mechanism.

Where things often go wrong is that artists are very poor; and although they might have a lot of talent, intelligence, and vision, they have to struggle to make money. So day by day, hour by hour, their vision goes downhill. In order to make money, they have to relate with perverted, neurotic people who demand that they go along with their

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Here we see a really pivotal moment of change, when art must become something that does not make people uncomfortable, so that they will spend money. The kind of person who is expected to consume art is transformed in the mind of the producer. The people who might very possibly love being expanded by what they see are never given the chance.

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In a way, crypto only magnifies or exposes the historically intimate ties between art, status and money. When we are in the thick of operating in the art system, it’s easy to forget how the aesthetic value, historical value, monetary value are actively negotiated for each art object. What web3 did was simply render art as a literal currency.

This is Vibe Theory: an expression of elite anxiety masquerading as a politics of resistance. It is also exemplary of what the tragic ur-European philosopher Walter Benjamin once called the “aestheticization of politics,” which in this case is the result of the odd incentives that ensue when the art world makes the invitations, pays the speaker... See more