There is nothing that Twitter can agree on. Discord, indignation, mockery, these are the mottos of the platform, its sustainable philosophy. There was a time, however, when the little blue tick on the platform indicated status, a verified reputation account, no matter how heavy.
Elon Musk ended those golden days, democratizing authenticity at $8 a month, and ever since there’s been an artist playing with the flattened reality of Twitter and asking the giant question: can humanity find consensus on anything ?
This individual is Jack Butcher, an advertising guru turned NFT star, whose Checks project, released earlier this year, gamified Twitter checkmark grid collection and generated over $50 million. The game went like this: first a 24 hour blitz with open edition NFTs priced, naturally, at $8, subsequent collectors were enticed to burn this original for an 80 chain tick grid which, when burned with another, created a 40 tick NFT. The logic of the game continued until the collectors reached the end of the rainbow: a single black check.
Exactly 100 days after the launch of ChecksButcher will close his final episode with Check the items, a 152-piece generative art collection created by Christie’s that offers collectors physical companions to digital assets. An auction of three printing and NFT pairs is taking place from May 16 to 23 on Christie’s NFT 3.0 Platform. Prints will be shipped from May 24th.
The Water, Air and Earth NFTs of Elements. Photo: Courtesy of Jack Butcher.
In his latest search for universal consensus, Butcher traveled to the pre-internet era, landing on earth, water, air and fire as primordial categorizations that defy geography, language or culture. Essentially, Checks collides ancient symbols of mankind’s analog past with the sign that once reigned supreme over digital. Consensus, Elements seem to profess, is temporary.
Each of these elements corresponds to a dominant color, the variations and gradients of which are revealed in four-by-five grids produced by a bespoke algorithm. These are digitally minted with a corresponding artwork printed via a lithographic press on paper chosen for its ability to handle intensive color overlays. The works are 30-by-42-inch mono prints spread over six levels, from Alpha (four prints) to Complete (64 prints).
“By translating Checks to the physical world, there is nothing interesting to me in a one-click process. It’s not conceptually exciting,” Butcher told Artnet News. “Checks is about authentication and there are parallels in how we create generative algorithms and the printing process. You have constraints and you add variables to create unique outputs. It is a very artisanal process. »
land of Elements framed. Photo: Jack Boucher.
To execute the physical works, Butcher partnered with master printmaker Jean Robert Milant, whose Cirrus Gallery has worked with Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, Mark Bradford and Judy Chicago for the past 50 years. It’s certainly a smash hit for Butcher, a creator whose work so far has been closer to the crypto crowd than the fine art world, and required a willingness to get your hands dirty. He achieved this over a two-day meeting, followed by intensive trial-and-error sessions that involved experimenting with crayons, crayons and ink washes.
The matchmaker was Martin Klipp, founder of Beyond creative artwho, fittingly, met Butcher at the opening of Beeple’s Charleston gallery and thinks his fellow Englishman is a “generational artist” whose work is “universal” in appeal.
Butcher checks in the studio. Photo: Courtesy of Jack Butcher.
Bold words, perhaps, but even before the resounding success of ChecksButcher has built a solid following and made hundreds of millions in sales through his series of Visualize value NFT, works that spell out big ideas in easy-to-digest graphics. The visual description of “Tool,” for example, depicts a flint next to an iPhone, while “Delivery” is a postage stamp next to a red notification panel.
It’s a stylistic minimalism that grew out of Butcher’s background in commercial design. “I realized the thing I was best at was trying to distill ideas into diagrams and visuals,” Butcher said. “But you had to find out what an NFT was to understand that there was an opportunity.”
On the other hand, Milant, while largely focused on physical prints, has a long-standing interest in works that reach the digital realm. “I’m seriously interested in bringing the world of fine art into the 21st century,” said Milant, noting he’s tried and failed to collaborate with artists on digital projects before. “There is this perception that the internet world is not art.”
Jean Robert Milant supervising the butcher’s shop Checks. Photo: courtesy of the butcher.
It’s a misconception, Milant and Butcher agreed, which is reflected in misunderstandings around the work involved in traditional printmaking, no doubt influenced by the advent of all things digital. From the outside, the terms “prints” and “editions” seem to connote the absence of the artist, a simple copy-paste. As Butcher discovered, that is far from the case. It’s an accusation that bears a strange echo to one frequently solicited from NFTs.
There is of course a contraction at play here, the idea that an individual whose career and following stemmed from digital mastery is now extolling the value of physical art alongside an old-school engraver . And he’s a perfectly knowledgeable butcher.
“Expanding the medium beyond digital feels more in the category of art than being perpetually on screen,” Butcher says. “There is an irony, but there is something special about seeing your work in the physical world.”
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