Andy Warhol would have loved (or maybe hated) NFTs

If Andy Warhol, the most famous artist of the 20th century, were alive today, he would make NFTs. The reasoning is simple: because for Warhol, business was art. So I decided to dig a bit and talk to Warhol experts to see if there was a case.

But Warhol was an artist who defied easy definition, and not everyone was keen to explore the highly speculative nature of the hypothesis. Professor Golan Levin, professor of electronic art at Carnegie Mellon University, said he couldn't help and instead suggested that I "ask a biographer of Warhol or a psychic medium".

Pretty fair. So I messaged famed Warhol biographer Blake Gopnik, author of Warhol.

And then I found a Warhol medium.

Gopnik is an art critic and regular contributor to The New York Times. He is the author of Warhol, a definitive biography of the pop artist.

A search on the Internet determined that it was also possible to arrange a session with Andy Warhol, as part of a tourist experience in Los Angeles.

I put the session on hold for later. I wouldn't dare dispute the medium's direct line to Warhol - my concern was that the medium would have a hard time explaining the NFTs to Warhol.

Andy Warhol's legacy is a nod to NFTs

Warhol, by Blake Gopnik

Gopnik's biography of Warhol seemed to postulate that money was a means, but provocation was always Warhol's end goal. Warhol liked to earn money to fund all of his creative endeavours, but he always sought to be provocative. So NFTs – which can be both provocative and lucrative – seem like a medium he would have embraced.

For starters, Warhol's later cinematic and photographic works certainly became increasingly provocative, bordering on pornography. The Warhol Diaries offers a fascinating insight into the pre-awakening era and artistic motivations of Warhol in the 1980s.

Second, "what is art" and whether NFTs are art is the wrong question. It's a minefield. Colborn Bell, founder of the Crypto Museum of Modern Art, tells me – most of the time they aren't. "A lot of NFTs aren't art to begin with. They really aren't."

A key argument in favor of my pet theory is how Warhol immediately used a new artistic medium whenever it was available for commercial success.

And his work was also not considered art by much of the establishment; he was forced to embrace this reality. It's a position similar to NFTs in popular culture today. Fidenza's acclaimed collections challenge the very concept of art and artists. If a computer produces the work, is it even art? they wonder.

There are many historical parallels.

Warhol turned the mundane into art

Warhol was a pioneer in turning commercial, mundane objects like Campbell's soup cans into art. He made movies, produced old music videos, and even had a TV talk show airing on MTV in the 1980s.

He also produced hundreds of pieces in a well-equipped studio known as "The Factory".

Avoided by art critics — the Museum of Modern Art in New York refused his free donation of a work entitled "Shoe" in 1956 — Warhol then realized that portraits of people could be very lucrative.

Many different clients sat for him, but each portrait might only exist as one or two paintings, according to Gopnik. His largest editions of Marilyn Monroe prints were 200 images, and they were never cheap, says Gopnik.

For comparison, while NFTs can be unique, mints are usually 10,000 in number.

Warhol painted political leaders, such as Mao and Lenin, (Che Guevara was attributed to him but was a fake painted by his assistant). And he painted celebrities, like Elvis, Marylin Monroe and Mick Jagger.