Republicans are rushing into NFTs
Plus: I’m obsessed with these vintage presidential campaign paper dresses
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Hello, in this week’s issue we’ll look at…
Republicans are rushing into NFTs
I’m obsessed with these vintage presidential campaign paper dresses
Artwork about the insurrection focuses on primary sources
I’m sorry but the number of Van Gogh experiences currently open or scheduled to open in America right now is out of control
Republicans are rushing into NFTs
When it comes to NFTs in politics, it’s rightwing Republicans who are the early adopters.
Former first lady Melania Trump and conservative artist Jon McNaughton both announced online NFT shops within a day of each other last month. Trump promised to release NFTs “in regular intervals” at melaniatrump.com, while McNaughton launched mcnifty.art, where he’s selling a collection of NFT images of former President Donald Trump.
“I don’t understand why, but they’re very collectable and they’re going to be around a long time,” McNaughton said in a video explaining the collection. “I am the artist who paints Trump and I do a pretty good job of it, so these NFTs are historic, they represent our time in history.”
The former first lady’s first NFT is a video of a watercolor painting of her eyes titled “My Vision” by French artist Marc-Antoine Coulon. It includes an audio recording of her saying, “My vision is look forward with inspiration, strength, and courage,” and a portion of the proceeds from the sale will go to helping children who are aging out of foster care, Trump said in a statement.
Coulon, who’s painted watercolor portraits of pop stars like Britney Spears and Rihanna, also painted Trump’s second NFT, which was announced today as a part of the Head of State Collection. The NFT is a watercolor portrait of Trump in the white, broad-brimmed Herve Pierre hat she wore when French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte visited the White House in 2018, and just one has been minted. Trump is also selling the hat itself; it’s like a FLOTUS Kardashian Kloset with an NFT shop attached. But will she ever release an NFT of her best tweet?
Republicans have also used NFTs to raise money for their campaigns. Last September, Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen, a doctor and former state lawmaker who’s minimized the threat posed by COVID-19 and opposed public health measures to slow the spread of the virus, put out a pair of state fair-themed NFTs. In Arizona, U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters released an NFT of the book cover for a book he cowrote with entrepreneur and rightwing megadonor Peter Thiel.
Masters minted just 99 NFTs of his book cover and sold them for $5,800, the Federal Election Commission maximum contribution, and they sold out. Meanwhile, McNaughton is offering 10,000 NFTs, and Trump sold 2,807 NFTs of “My Vision,” according to Solana, a blockchain platform.
The Republican push into NFTs is backed by the conservative tech industry. Trump partnered with the social media company Parler for her NFT launch, and the company promoted the “Melania’s Vision” sale through its mailing list. McNaughton is working with LetsGo, an NFT platform whose CEO has worked with rightwing figures including Milo Yiannopolis and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), according to McNaughton’s site.
I’m obsessed with these vintage presidential campaign paper dresses
In the late 1960s, mail-order paper dresses were a fast fashion fad that made their way briefly into presidential politics during the 1968 campaign. Disposable campaign items including a Richard Nixon dress and George Romney dress and cape were sold by Mars of Asheville, a North Carolina hosiery company, and they’re now on display at Phoenix Art Museum’s Generation Paper exhibition.
Paper dresses started with Scott Paper Company, which put out a single-use “Paper Caper” dress in 1966. The “Dura-Weve” fabric used in the company’s dresses and disposable tableware was flame-resistant and a forerunner to the personal protective equipment worn by frontline healthcare workers today. Robert Kennedy and Nelson Rockefeller, who also ran during the 1968 cycle, got their own paper dresses too.
The designs used in the Nixon and Romney dresses have lived on. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) used his dad’s logo in a throwback Vintage Collection during his 2012 presidential campaign, and Lena Dunham wore a “Hillary” dress based on the Nixon design while campaigning for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Generation Paper is open through July 17, 2022.
Artwork about the insurrection is based on primary sources
This week marks one year since the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and I’ve noticed artwork depicting the day often uses primary sources like photos and data, not just for inspiration, but as a medium.
12,500 images posted to Twitter and Parler on Jan. 6 were projected onto a 30-foot mosaic wall for Laila Shereen Sakr’s “Capitol Glitch,” which was on display at UC San Diego late last year. For doomscrolling, 120 pieces of weathered, graffiti-covered plywood previously used to board up New York City businesses in 2020 became the canvas for a series of woodblock prints showing images taken between May 24, 2020 and Jan. 6th, 2021. The exhibition, by Zorawar Sidhu and Rob Swainston, is on display at Petzel Gallery in New York City through Feb. 12.
“We are depicting events that are dirty and messy,” Swainston said in a statement. “Having the plywood distressed is a part of the story.”
Robert Longo based his charcoal depiction of Jan. 6 on a photo taken on an iPhone. The large scale work was one piece in a larger exhibition about the pandemic era at Pace Gallery in New York City last fall.
I’m sorry but the number of Van Gogh experiences currently open or scheduled to open in America right now is out of control
It has come to my attention that all those Vincent Van Gogh projection exhibitions that have been popping up across the country are actually run by different companies, and some have even opened competing exhibitions in the same city.
Immersive Van Gogh proudly touts itself as the original for its 75,000 square foot New York City exhibition, which opened last June. It includes animation by digital artist Massimiliano Siccardi, set design by Hamilton set designer David Korins, and it now has exhibitions in 20 cities in the U.S. and Canada.
Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience operates in 13 U.S. cities and Imagine Van Gogh is opening in Boston and Tacoma, Wash., in March. The Indianapolis Museum of Art — which has an actual Van Gogh in its collection, his 1889 “Landscape art Saint-Rémy” — even opened its own Van Gogh projection exhibition last year, which runs through May 2022.
Industry insiders told Bloomberg the proliferation of Van Gogh projection exhibitions is thanks to the pandemic-era need for safe, socially distanced activities, the “Starry Night” scene in the Netflix show “Emily in Paris,” and the fact that Van Gogh’s work is in the public domain (the Dutch painter died in 1890). Even though the art is free to use, though, the cost of setting one of these up ranges from $1 million on the low end to as much as $15 million to build out a space that will be used for future immersive experiences.
Personally, these exhibitions feel like the Van Gogh version of an angel wings street mural and I’d rather spend my time and money at an actual art museum. Still, it’s an accessible way to experience art, they’re wildly popular, and Britney Spears took her sons to one in L.A., so who am I to judge? No matter how you feel about them, they don’t look like they’re going away anytime soon. Claude Monet: The Immersive Experience opened last month in L.A.
This is cool
In case you wanted to know the fonts used by Adidas, Google, and other big brands, here’s a thread. Spoiler alert: there’s a lot of Futura and Helvetica.
Happy New Year! 🥳 ICYMI, I wrote about how colorful, luscious gradients took over political design. You can read the story here.
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