Would the Mona Lisa be valuable if DaVinci could have made 1000s of EXACT copies? I’m gonna say no, but that’s exactly where we are. It’s cute someone says they own something like an NFT, or that it’s the original, but it’s nothing more than an illusion of uniqueness.
Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans were produced by a screen printing process and he made 32 canvases.
There is nothing that physically could have stopped Warhol from printing thousands of Campbell's Soup Cans instead of the 32.
And in the same way, a digital artist can choose to mint any number of NFTs for a work of art or variations of a work of art. If a digital artist chooses to mint a limited number of NFTs on the blockchain and this run of NFTs gains traction then it's a similar situation to the Campbell's Soup Cans in my opinion. In both cases, the artist could choose to print more physical Campbell's Soup Cans after the fact or mint more NFTs after the fact, but the initial run will forever be the "original" run, and they will remain special because of this. Simply because we assign special meaning to that.
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Munch made four versions of The Scream.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream#Versions
Paul Cézanne made several variations of many of the same motifs, for example with his drawings and paintings of the skulls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_C%C3%A9zanne
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Skulls
https://www.kesslerramirez.com/blog/art-history-101-pyramid-...
And then there is Andy Warhol with his Campbell's Soup Cans and other works of art.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_Soup_Cans
Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans were produced by a screen printing process and he made 32 canvases.
There is nothing that physically could have stopped Warhol from printing thousands of Campbell's Soup Cans instead of the 32.
And in the same way, a digital artist can choose to mint any number of NFTs for a work of art or variations of a work of art. If a digital artist chooses to mint a limited number of NFTs on the blockchain and this run of NFTs gains traction then it's a similar situation to the Campbell's Soup Cans in my opinion. In both cases, the artist could choose to print more physical Campbell's Soup Cans after the fact or mint more NFTs after the fact, but the initial run will forever be the "original" run, and they will remain special because of this. Simply because we assign special meaning to that.