So where did that $69 mn artwork go? (…and more)

A SUMMARY OF THE MOST EXCITING ART NEWS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE

While we focus on Indian art, we can’t obviously function in a vacuum. It’s a small world and everything is connected, especially on the web. So, let’s train our spotlight across the world map to see what’s going on — from art trends to socio-political issues to everything that affects the great aesthetic global consciousness. Or, let’s just travel the world and have some fun!

Mystery buyer is Singapore-based desi

After digital artist Beeple (urf Mike Winkelmann) sold that record-breaking piece last week, the art world had been left scratching its head on who forked out that gigantic sum at a Christie’s auction for what is essentially a JPG file. Answer: Singapore-based coder of Indian (Tamil) origin, Metakovan. He is the founder of the world’s largest NFT (non-fungible token) fund, Metapurse, and has been amassing an almost $120 million collection of tokenized art over the last several years. Slate explores the details.

Crypto Art carbon calculator shut down

But even as the art world buzzes with the language of NFTs and cryptocurrency, a unique initiative to allow the calculation of carbon emissions associated with non-fungible tokens was forced into closure. Cryptoart.wtf creator Memo Akten stated that he decided to take the site down after information from it was used “as a tool for abuse and harassment”. The calculator was doing important work — for instance, it processed that Grimes’ recent sale of 303 editions of a short video called Earth as NFTs for $7,500 each cost 122,416 kilowatt-hours of electricity, or an EU resident’s average total electricity consumption over 34 years. Read more at Gizmodo.

Post-pandemic, how do you fix art?

In an upcoming report (Art and the World After This, written for the Metcalf Foundation (an arts-forward non-profit) and the City of Toronto), artist-researcher David Maggs points out that the arts sector both locally and globally is dealing with the effects of not just one disruption, but four: Covid-19, rising social unrest, the digital revolution and the sustainability crisis. His tips to improve vulnerabilities include innovating to get back to live events, ditching some traditional models for non-profits, and more. The Globe and Mail outlines.