Warhol, Pepe, and the Rise of NFT Culture

This raises the question: what is art? Is the value of the Mona Lisa at least partly derived from the fact that there is only one of it, and that it is impossible to truly recreate? Does the uniqueness of the Mona Lisa’s oil on canvas - contrasted with the fact that Pudgy Penguin #6240 can be easily and perfectly saved and stored on an unlimited number of devices - make the Mona Lisa more of an artwork than a Pudgy Penguin or a CryptoPunk?

On-chain art exists on a continuum of art whose value derives from its provenance and conceptual underpinnings rather than an individual's ability to recreate it. From Andy Warhol to Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, there is a long lineage of high-profile artists whose work is produced by a team and can be recreated with near or perfect fidelity. In these cases, the value of the work lies in the underlying concept of the art, its cultural impact, and its provenance - factors that also underpin the value of NFT art. In NFTs, we see a continuation of this artistic lineage. Where Andy Warhol is the seed, Pepe the Frog is the fruit. 

From reproducibility, to the varying of different traits and even the current Supreme Court lawsuit around the doctrine of Fair Use - how and where you can use someone else’s IP - Warhol’s artistic DNA can be found in the current movement of NFTs and the renewed conversations about copyleft and IP.

From Campbell’s soup cans to Einstein, Warhol’s art has left an indelible mark on successive generations. In his famed Factory, workers operated a production line to create silkscreen paintings en masse, tweaking attributes like background color to produce distinct prints within a series. Warhol often delegated the physical production, relying on commercial print houses to manufacture the silkscreens and assistants to produce the prints. 

Warhol’s approach to prints mirrors the generative logic of NFTs. Attributes such as the background colour, text colour of a can, or the hair colour of Marilyn Monroe are varied between prints creating differentiation - resulting in unique or semi-unique items - within a collection. Warhol’s focus on reproducibility, his use of varied traits, and the de-emphasis of the artist as the direct creator firmly places him as a precursor to the generative processes now associated with crypto art.

While ‘right-click and save’ isn’t directly applicable, a not dissimilar argument can be made about Warhol’s prints. Much like NFTs, uniqueness and reproducibility are not primary factors in determining the works’ authenticity. It is estimated that there are tens of thousands of authentic Warhols globally, with authorised replicas also counted as official Warhols - an authorised replica is a print made after Warhol’s death using official silkscreens and certified by the Warhol Foundation. So, what makes a Warhol a Warhol? Several factors, but namely: the print’s conceptual origin and authentication by the artist's studio. Much like NFTs, provenance, authentication - default features of on-chain art - and the remixing of attributes creating semi-unique works, is a defining factor of Warhol.

It seems fair to say, with minimal explanation, that Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons exist along the Andy-Pepe continuum, occupying the post-Andy pre-Pepe space. This is evident even beyond discussions about whether art should be unique or if perfectly reproducible art can still be considered art. Koons’ work includes Hoovers in a box and framed Nike advertisements, alongside his well-known balloon dogs. Similarly, the question of whether artists should create their own art arises - Bentley & Skinner crafted Hirst's $78 million diamond-encrusted skull, while MDM Props of London produced his famous stuffed shark. More than anything, both the NFT industry (at least in part) and these two artists seem to embody Warhol’s notion that "Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art."

Where does Pepe fit in, beyond the fact Pepe is a global icon..?

Pepe the Frog is not only the most ubiquitous internet icon of (nearly) the last two decades, but for many people, Pepe was the first meme they ever encountered. A delightful cartoon stoner frog, Pepe debuted in a 2005 comic and quickly spread across the internet, from 4chan and MySpace to Tumblr and Reddit. Pepe’s face, image, and catchphrases were subsequently remixed and appropriated for every possible situation, serving as an early and clear-cut example of internet culture memetics.

From Pepe’s inception, the frog has been discussed and shared across the political spectrum and among all social strata, from questionable 4chan users to U.S. presidents. Pepe has been shared by Hollywood stars such as Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj, appropriated as a symbol of Trump’s alt-right voter base, denounced by Hillary Clinton, and considered a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Pepe has served as the face of one of the first prototypal Bitcoin-based NFTs, appeared as a pro-democracy symbol during anti-CCP protests in Hong Kong (2019–2020), toured the world in various art forms, from Art Basel to Zurich, and, most recently, was used as Elon Musk’s profile image.

To clarify, in addition to being one of the earliest, most prolific, and longest-standing memes, Pepe was also the face of either the first NFT or, arguably, the NFT prototype, depending on who you ask. In 2016, the Rare Pepe movement emerged. Rare Pepes became one of the earliest examples of tokenised art, with new creations and older Pepe memes stored on the Bitcoin-based Counterparty platform. Today, Rare Pepes hold historical and collectible value due to their role as pioneers in the crypto art world, with prices often ranging in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and, in some cases, millions - a Rare Pepe sold at Sotheby's for $3.6 million in 2021.

What does Pepe have to do with Warhol? Warhol’s work can arguably be seen as a pre-internet analogue memes, mirroring today’s meme-based NFTs and generative art, both in its cultural reach and dynamic evolution over time. Warhol’s art permeated popular culture, evolving and influencing subsequent generations of artists and artistic movements, from Damien Hirst to the iconic imagery of Obama’s 2008 ‘Hope’ campaign. Warhol’s production process, with its deliberate chopping, altering, and remixing of colours and images, serves as a clear precursor to today’s generative NFTs, which largely borrow these techniques, albeit in a purely digital format.

Warhol’s work clearly carried a tongue-in-cheek, almost satirical element: very expensive prints favoured by the socio-economic elite, produced on a production line in a building called ‘The Factory,’ featuring images of everyday, cheap consumables like Campbell’s soup (not dissimilar to Jeff Koons’ Hoovers). With Warhol’s work, the legitimacy of pieces varied, from those created by Warhol himself, to those produced in The Factory, to works made posthumously and simple imitation prints. Without external authentication, it can be nearly impossible to tell. Even then, it does not mean the man himself had anything to do with it or was even alive.

Warhol’s work lives on and evolves - a true example of a meme. In many cases, it is impossible to distinguish fakes from authentics or even from the more authentic. Similarly, Pepe has propagated as a meme, taking on a life of its own. Determining which Pepes are legitimate is equally challenging. Is it only the Counterparty-based Rare Pepes certified by the Rare Pepe Foundation? Are the still-expensive Fake Rare Pepes, managed by the Fake Rare community, to be valued and considered authentic? Or should only the NFTs created by Pepe’s original creator, Matt Furie, hold any value?