4Chan Conceptual Artwork Reaches $90,000 on eBay ⇥ news.artnet.com

Sarah Cascone, Artnet:

Online message board 4chan, notorious for its irreverent sense of humor, has spawned what is either a bizarre art project or a massive flipping of the bird to the art world: a photo of a 4chan post, being auctioned as art on eBay. The auction item, Artwork by Anonymous, reads “Art used to be something to cherish. Now literally anything could be art. This post is art.” The existentialist musing could prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, with bidding rapidly approaching six figures and just under seven hours left to bid.

I’m not sure whether this piece deserves a proper critique, or even if it can be taken seriously enough to warrant one. As an artwork, it reads like a second-year student’s work, produced just after they learned about dadaism. As a statement, it’s played.

But its presentation — a photograph of an anonymous message board posting that automatically deletes itself after inactivity — speaks volumes: it’s a captured version of something designed to be temporary. It’s a moment captured in time that would otherwise likely be overlooked. It’s a bold statement that’s completely unoriginal, presented within a fairly original contextual framework.

It’s not a very strong piece on its own. But with a potential price tag of $90,000 attached, it becomes an extremely strong statement. It’s, at the very least, intriguing.