Oddbean

Back on Nostr, Bitcoin artist over here Melbourne, AUS Untitled (Copy of Cowboy), 2024 CMYK Airbrush polymer // 130x200cm Exploring value, scarcity, time, theft, and degradation through copying, this painting is a hand painted (dot by dot) appropriation of Richard Prince’s Untitled (Cowboy) print that saw him photograph a Marlboro ad campaign, cropping out the logo and presenting the work as his own. What’s interesting to me is the perception of value, time is the scarcest asset we have, yet this time-intensive hand painted copy will never reach the monetary value ($3.7 million at auction) of the original work, although it took significantly longer than photographing a billboard. So what is it that we value? Perhaps it’s ideas that hold value, or perception of status, financial gain, or maybe it’s the feeling we experience and find value in when we attain something we desire. Through the process of ongoing reproduction (think photocopying a photocopy) there is degradation of quality, and at the same time increasing the quantity and making the item less scarce eventually leads to a reduction in overall value for all stakeholders. Prince’s work epitomised American freedom through the iconography of the cowboy, however the cowboy was implicit in stealing land from Native Americans. In parallels, the image of the cowboy in my reinterpretation now represents the dangers in the wild west of the digital age, where AI is the cowboy that scrapes internet information and spits it out as its own. Credit to Norm Clasen who was one of the four photographers hired by Marlboro to shoot the original Cowboy series, and secondly Richard Prince who set the precedent in copying this photograph before me. #bitcoinartist #nostrartist #artist #art #bitcoin #storeofvalue https://image.nostr.build/358806c57e2af246d0e5d5325fb0b6b34b13e6e79d90aa8c5aa7beca1135cb5c.jpg