How Tech Bros Warped the Art World

NFTs, Bart Simpson, KAWS, and the Anti-Elite Culture Wars

‘Companion (Passing Through)’ by KAWS at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Photo: Carol Highsmith / Library of Congress

I’d assumed that the only way to become culturally sophisticated was to learn about culture. Opera. Theater. The symphony. Museum shows. Things you don’t go to. These you “attend.”

But I was wrong. Every Chekhov performance and Mahler symphony (the 8th twice!) was a waste. I didn’t have to do a thing to become culturally sophisticated. It turns out the culture would devolve so swiftly into stupidity that simply by staying a philistine yokel, I’d look like a genius. Especially with art. Which has descended into idiartcracy.

All the art I’ve read about in the last few years is some version of Homer Simpson killing Bart Simpson with lasers that shoot from his eyes. Or The Simpsons with their eyes x’ed out. (Sold for $14.7 million, possibly to Justin Bieber.) A very smart artist I met creates digital images of Lego sculptures of Air Jordans. It’s all Bro Art.

I know that art is often aggressively male: A Duchamp urinal here, a Damien Hirst bisected cow carcass there. But this new art isn’t hypermasculine fronting. This is hyperchildlike fronting. It’s art you would put on your childhood bedroom wall if you weren’t smart enough to understand why Dali’s clocks were melty. Not only is Beeple’s Abraham Lincoln spanking Donald Trump not art, it’s not even a decent political cartoon.

Images from Beeple’s crypto art exhibition in Beijing, ‘Virtual Niche: Have You Ever Seen Memes in the Mirror?’ Photo: Nicolas Asfouri / AFP via Getty

Though Beeple (the x’ed out Simpsons bro) sold an NFT for $69 million, the sixth most expensive piece of art by a living artist (behind two Jasper Johns, a David Hockney, a Damien Hirst and a Jeff Koons), the leader of Bro Art is KAWS (the Simpsons laser bro). He has a new show at New York’s Per Skarstedt’s gallery and is in the permanent collection of several major museums. When the Museum of Modern Art in New York City sold KAWS figurines, the demand crashed their website. In October, KAWS made Fortnite skins and cereal boxes for Reese’s Puffs, which has me more upset than finding out that there’s a Reese’s Puffs cereal.

There’s a good chance I’m wrong about Bro Art being dumb due to the fact that I don’t…