Takashi Murakami talks about NFT: Collecting NFT is addictive, and subculture will occupy the mainstream market

On April 23, the famous Japanese fashion artist Takashi Murakami published a long article on Instagram, expounding his views on NFT. Murakami had previously auctioned the pixel version of the sunflower NFT on the NFT trading platform OpenSea, but later canceled the auction. The reason given by Murakami was his lack of understanding of NFT.

This article was written by Takashi Murakami after he participated in an NFT sharing session held on Clubhouse. It was also his first time talking about NFT after the cancellation of the NFT auction. In this article, Takashi Murakami discusses why crypto artists are very loyal to the crypto art community, why people collect NFT collections such as CryptoPunks, what NFT means to people suffering from the new crown epidemic, and the reasons for the rise of subculture.

Rhythm BlockBeats translated the full text as follows.

Original author: Takashi Murakami

I attended a discussion hosted by Jehan Chu and Loic Gouzer in Clubhouse. The famous NFT collector Pablo also joined the discussion. I also have some of my own thoughts on NFT that I would like to write down and share with you.

First, let's look at Beeple's work, who became famous for his Christie's auction. His works are very sci-fi and often full of social criticism. Beeple's status on Instagram seems to be comparable to Banksy's offline status. He has joined the NFT field to sell his animations and static works. He has also chosen to enter the world of NFT to communicate with those who have been active in the NFT ecosystem for a long time.

When it comes to crypto art, it is currently growing together with the crypto world, and in my opinion, the sci-fi sense and compatibility of crypto art are driving the rapid development of the NFT field. I believe that all crypto artists will be proud of living in a new field created and built by themselves, and will share their beliefs and awe of the countless development possibilities in the future with more people, and the feelings of each individual artist will eventually be sublimated into collective pride. This can be said to be the heroism and romanticism of crypto artists.

On the other hand, series of collectibles such as CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties have a similar principle to collectible cards, which is to encourage people to buy by arousing their desire for possession. The total number of CryptoPunks is 10,000, and the few blue Alien Punks are extremely rare, so they are repeatedly sold at sky-high prices. And this behavior of spending a sky-high price to buy a pixel avatar is driven by the "desire" in the hearts of collectors.

Art collection requires a "motivation". Everything is difficult at the beginning, but once you start collecting and become completely immersed in it, collecting will make you addicted. Sometimes people think that after I spend all my money, this "addiction" will naturally be quit, but it is not. The reason why it is called "addiction" is that even if you know you can no longer afford it, you still want to buy more art.

So I also think that, to some extent, there are many addictive factors lurking in NFT works such as Beeple, CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties.

In the following, I will share with you my own story of becoming addicted to collecting, and try to interpret the current NFT craze from this point of view.

In 2008, my sculpture "My Lonesome Cowboy" was sold at a high price of $15 million at Sotheby's auction house, which surprised me and made me want to explore, experience, buy and collect art in person. So I started collecting art crazily, spending almost two-thirds of the money I earned, and I also truly experienced the mentality of a person when collecting.

Art collecting and auctions are really addictive. I bought a lot of works, sometimes even though I didn’t have much money and was on the verge of bankruptcy several times, but I still couldn’t stop.

I think in the world of NFT, collecting has the same addictiveness. Once a work becomes a collectible item in a certain environment, its addictiveness will prompt people to buy it, and with a sky-high price transaction, people will start talking about it constantly and begin to explore the value behind it, which will in turn drive people's desire to buy, and sellers will take this opportunity to continue to promote their works.

The NFT world used to be relatively closed, but this time the crypto art craze started almost at the same time as the cryptocurrency bull market, which may also be inextricably linked to its addictive nature.

When people are trapped at home or in dire straits due to the global pandemic, they often need to rely on something to keep their mental state at a normal and healthy level. In the past, this might have been something that religion needed to do.

During the pandemic, people will be more interested in games, crypto assets, and money games. At this time, people will naturally like things with fantastic elements, whether cute or sci-fi, which can help them save their souls from this cruel reality.

I think this transformation is very similar to how Star Wars changed the future of the film industry. Sci-fi movies that were once unacceptable have now become the mainstay of the world box office, and people also discuss philosophy and consciousness in sci-fi movies. Now everyone also understands the important position of Marvel and DC movies in film history.

In Japan, anime is an important part of Japanese culture. Japanese anime and games have influenced Japanese culture and finance for about 50 years, and now they are going global. In other words, subcultures that were once considered childish and immature are now taking over the mainstream market.

From this perspective, those cute or sci-fi NFT works will be the trend of this era. They are completely different from contemporary art, and my creative style, super flat, is very suitable for this era. Therefore, I have developed a strong interest in NFT art, and by immersing myself in this trend of the times and conducting research, I have come to understand the significance of super flatness and the direction of its subsequent development.