Warhol once quipped that an artist is a person who produces things that people don’t need to have. Nothing suits that description more than the concept of a meme, a humorous video or image created and spread online. But does that mean memes qualify as art?

Recently, high prices paid for memes minted as NFTs are attracting serious investment. Read on as we decide if it is time to start reassessing memes as art.

Pepes

Our story starts all the way back in 2005, with a comic called Boys Club. Created by Matt Furie, one image from the book featuring a small green frog became an overnight sensation. With a simple speech bubble saying, “Feels good man,” this frog, named Pepes, was used to respond in the ways gifs are today.

After this, Pepes took on a life of his own. He got remixed, redrawn, and became the first meme celebrity. He came to symbolize everything that Reddit and 4chan represented. He was freedom, fun, and collective ownership of internet properties.

Unfortunately, like most celebrity stories, fame caused Pepe’s underground credentials to wane. Once stars like Nicki Minaj began to use his image, his popularity faded.

This culminated in his adoption by the internet’s far-right members. 4chan followers were ejected from political events for shouting about Pepes. Suddenly, Pepes had lost his cool.

Frog from the Flames

But Pepes had not given up. Originally, his image had traded and changed without restriction. Everyone was free to make images of Pepes and swap or trade them. However, the concept of the NFT is what would fuel Pepe’s resurgence.

The first Rare Pepes trading cards emerged in 2016. The difference was that these variations on a meme were now a tagged asset. For the first time, people could claim ownership of Pepes, and affix value.

This value started to turn heads at the world’s first digital art auction. Held at the Rare Art Labs Digital Art Festival in New York, amongst other works of digital art was a Rare Pepes digital trading card. An amalgamation of Pepes and Homer Simpson, it would fetch $39,000.

That was only the beginning. The card would be later sold on again, bringing in $320,000 in February 2021.

Nyan Cat

The most famous meme turned into a valuable work of art is that of Nyan Cat. The gif of a small, grey cat traveling through space emerged around 10 years ago. To mark its anniversary, its creator, artist Chris Torres, decided to auction an NFT of the image.

The remastered version of the original animation sold on Foundation. It reached the staggering sum of $580,000.

Memeology

These instances of memes attracting value in the digital marketplace are interesting. They can represent two quite varied types of memes. Pepes represents a meme from the early days of the internet, before the concept of ownership or NFT was even imaginable.

The second, Nyan Cat, represents a period when the internet had grown up a little. Its landscape had become safer, more technology savvy and people had got wiser to the monetary value of memes and viral content. Using these case studies, we can deduce if memes do actually count as art.

Parallel Pepes

Pepes is interesting in that if we discuss him as a piece of art, he could be one of the first mass examples of digital collaborative art ever produced. Yes, Pepes was created by one person. But it was a collaborative effort and consciousness that gave him life and purpose.

That is not to say that art collaborations have never existed before. In fact, some of the greatest artists in modern history formed collaborations and partnerships. However, many of these have been partnerships between people who were artists themselves.

If we look at the criteria given by the Museum of International Folk Art, then Pepes ticks all the boxes for inclusion as a piece of folk art. Does he reflect shared cultural aesthetics and social issues? Yes. Is he an art form that may be learned formally, informally, or self-taught? Yes.

Pepes was taken on by people from all skill sets and levels. In essence, he was the folk art of the digital era. With the emphasis being on was.

Memes as Digital Folk Art

The repercussions of this digital folk art explosion can be seen on any NFT site today. CryptoPunks, for example, was one of the first trends to use digital, pixelated character images in an NFT. Now, the formula has been adopted far and wide, modified to suit a whole host of scenarios. The same type of image can be viewed in everything from crypto clowns to kongs.

Do they qualify as folk art using the previous definitions? Yes. All of these can be said of memes and to some extent, early NFTs.

Mainstream Movements

However, like most folk movements, mainstream acceptance is inevitable.

While Nyan Cat has been viewed multiple times in different forms and on different images, the stamping of an NFT has denoted ownership. Unlike Pepes, who remains an open property during the NFT craze, Nyan Cat has been claimed back by its owner.

So, what does this mean for digital art? It means that while NFTs have some great advantages, allowing creators and artists to finally earn a wage, they may spell the end of the internet as a form of digital folk art. People now have the ability to claim ownership of a meme, which robs a meme of its essence in the first place.

So, Are Memes Art?

It all comes down to what your definition of art is. I always define art as a human act done as an expression of emotional understanding and interpretation of the world, and something not linked to survival.

A dance or cave painting is art, as they are about expression and understanding. This is no different from memes, particularly when we use viral memes such as Pepes as our example. He is no different to pieces of ornate African folk art of the great work of the arts and crafts movement.

However, where things stop becoming art is when they begin to serve purposes of survival. For example, hunting and gathering would never be art, as in the past they were necessary to exist. While we don’t have that identical need in the modern world, what we have replaced it with is the accumulation of wealth, essential for our survival.

When things become created for the purpose of wealth accumulation, and thus survival, they stop becoming art. This is the phase we could be entering right now.

With NFTs, we have created both the savior of art and its own destruction. Memes were a folk art movement, adopted by the masses. The NFT has allowed us to privatize meme culture, monetize it and at the same time, destroy its very essence.

When people start to organize auctions to sell off memes as NFTs, such as Chris Torres’ Memeconomy event, they rob the meme of its essence. It no longer becomes art for art’s sake, but the pursuit of creating memes for private assets and personal gain. Creating memes becomes no different from investing in stocks or buying real estate.

The Meme Is Here to Stay

Can we stop it? Probably not, because it is a natural trajectory that art forms follow. Once popularity hits, value is attached, and they slowly become assimilated into the mainstream. While this may spell the end for memes as we know them, it is another piece of evidence to prove that memes, currently at least, are art.

Totally disagree with us? Do you have a different defintion of art and thus, what a meme is? Let us know in the comments below or on social media!