If there’s one thing everyone can agree on today, it’s that CryptoPhunks caused a stir. The Phunks were the only project I came across that intrigued me to the point I decided to “mint” them. I’m a CryptoPunk owner from the $300 range, and nothing but Phunks could rival the zest I first had for the Punks. Here’s why: the developers built an aesthetically attractive website and the clever way they incorporated the “Flippening” (an esoteric term in which crypto-natives find meaning) into their project immediately sold me on the idea. (Flippening traditionally refers to Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by marketcap, overtaking that of Bitcoin.) The Flippening applied to Phunks is a concept that describes the process of literally flipping the traditional right-facing CryptoPunks to the left. The attributes and numbers of the punks remain the same, the key difference being the mirrored effect (a minor difference is the addition of colored borders around the Phunks, used for classification of rarity, which CryptoPunks do not have.) This was an adroit appropriation of Punks, though at the time I was unaware it would become the most controversial art in the history of NFT’s.
It is important to recognize the project did not have a massive PR campaign or following, and the gas wars and minting escapades we hear so much about today never occurred. Over the course of a few weeks, all 10,000 Phunks were steadily minted by collectors. The process of the minting itself exceeded my expectations, as the developers made a bit of a game of it. Once you spent your Ethereum to mint, 8 Phunks would appear on screen and a border would jump from Phunk to Phunk, after a few moments finally landing on your prize. This was the only project I had minted up to this point, but those who had more experience than I described this as the most innovative, exciting, and addicting minting process they’ve ever experienced.
It did not take long after the project was launched, and each of the 10,000 Phunks were minted, for the controversy to begin. Phunks were first delisted from Opensea on June 21st because Opensea made the judgment call on what qualifies as art, art not as subjective but objective and they believed objectively non-transformative. This is quite ironic considering they advertise themselves as “The largest decentralized NFT marketplace.” Following pushback from the Phunk community, they were relisted only to be delisted 3 days later on June 24th. Again a pushback and a relist and just when NFTers were coming to recognize Phunks as potentially meaningful art, they were delisted by Opensea on July 13, following a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint by the lawyers for Larva Labs, the creators of the original CryptoPunks. (Curious considering Larva Labs does not own the copyright to “CryptoPhunks”.) Ultimately, Opensea was exposed as highly centralized and attempted to obfuscate their record, leaning on their argument that they did not play the role of curator and ban Phunks, but rather the delisting was the result of the DMCA complaint (conveniently omitting the fact they had banned it twice before). Robert Mapplethorpe immediately comes to mind when we consider the history of censored art by the “gallery”, that is, the “gallery” as constituting those purveyors of art who consider themselves the cognoscenti of any given Art-historical moment. The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Cincinnati cancelled Mapplethorpe’s retrospective in 1990 due to public protest. Thanks to the Phunk’s initial rejection by authority, it moves the work to a category alongside Mapplethorpe, whose homoerotic imagery was banned because it proved too subversive for the powers that be. Phunks too remain subversive. “Mirror-image punks,” “IP ripoff,” “low effort trash,” and “exact clone” are just a few examples of some common epithets you’ll hear bandied about by the detractors. This cadre of detractors seem to have missed the last half century of evolution in art, where the concept of an artwork gained ever increasing importance over any mimetic display. I welcome the derision. When the debates over an artwork are heated to a boiling point of controversy that spills over into the public realm, historically this is a recipe for staying power and the historical importance of the work(s) under such contentious consideration. The Phunks will survive on merit whether the gallery deems them worthy or not. The art resides in the idea of the Phunks.
It is my observation that we have entered an “epoch of memes,” most strongly symbolized by the resurgence of Dogecoin, a Bitcoin copy with an ever-expanding supply. Useless in the traditional, utilitarian sense of the word, but powerful for its memetic quality, I believe Dogecoin carries a unique utility both authentic and non-replicatable. As an extension, what is traditionally known as appropriation art, a branch of conceptual art which crypto natives call “parody” art, has emerged. Phunks ignited the age-old debate concerning appropriation and as I detailed earlier, have been swiftly and repeatedly censored by gatekeepers. What enthusiasts might not be aware of, however, is that their trail was largely paved in the late 1970s by the artist Richard Prince, in his iconic Cowboy series, in which he reappropriated the Marlboro Man. The Marlboro Man campaign, as introduced by the tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris, became one of the world’s most successful advertising coups, running nationally from 1955 until 1999. Advertisements would feature ranchers, or actors posing as ranchers — the ultimate symbols of the (mythical) tough, independent, American (white) male. Enamored of their simple, yet evocative depiction of an American archetype, Richard Prince photographed the ads himself, enlarged them for impact and cropped out the text. He rebranded the advertisement work as his own “Untitled (Cowboy)” series. Prince never credited the original photographers. He eliminated the photographs’ commercial context and hung them in a gallery setting, making the images “art” in a way that the campaign photos never were. In 2014, one of Prince’s appropriated works realized $3.7 million at Christie’s. By re-photographing Marlboro cigarette advertisements, Prince challenged the nature of photography and the notion of authorship and subverted the conventional narrative of authenticity. As outlined by historian Nancy Spector, “Prince’s appropriations of existing photographs are never merely copies of the already available. Instead, they extract a kind of photographic unconscious from the image, bringing to the fore suppressed truths about its meaning and its making.” Prince has explained that he uses existing artwork — which is under copyright — and comments on it through “recontextualization.” Famously, he won the case Cariou v. Prince, in which the Second Circuit found that his artwork could be considered transformative fair use. Effectively, his re-photography created the new art form of appropriation which foreshadowed the current decentralization debates.
To conclude, Meme culture has also ushered in an age of NFT appropriation that parallel’s Prince’s breakthrough, his shifting of the paradigm. Conceptual artist Ryder Ripps experimented with appropriation of Punks and in addition to the individual Punks, which are right-click saved and listed for sale on NFT marketplace Foundation, he also lists for sale as NFTs the DMCA letters sent to him by Larva Labs lawyers. Similarly, Punk4156, an influential NFT figure, experimented with the medium by listing his own right-click saved Punk. However, unlike Ripps and 4156, CryptoPhunks are the first major project and 10,000 PFP (profile picture) project to use this established genre of art in the metaverse.
Utimately, it’s not our place to decide what does and does not constitute parody, that’s the world we’re leaving behind. The DMCA takedown notice was a sign of weakness, not strength. Phunks represent the ideas central to blockchain and challenges outdated ideas of copyright. What launched as appropriation art matured into a fight for decentralization against “the largest decentralized NFT marketplace.” While we will not succeed in convincing everyone that Phunks are legitimate art, and many still do not consider Richard Prince to be a legitimate artist, we will still capture the spirit of those who are ready to embrace a postmodern aesthetic in the metaverse. Larva Labs misses the irony of their marquee project’s namesake juxtaposed with their actions, and fails to recognize that any usage of Punks only widens their moat (there must be hundreds if not thousands of Punk-inspired projects.) Their behavior is entirely indicative of a venture capitalist muck flinging and a lawyered up web 2.0 mentality. You cannot censor the blockchain. You cannot DMCA the blockchain. We will sit back and watch as their outdated business model intersects with the iconoclastic ethos of crypto. The irony is not lost, Phunks are the real punks.
