Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are all the rage these days. If you're not familiar with what NFTs are, they're essentially an unbreakable-blockchain lock that guards a link to a file. When you buy an NFT, you are buying the key to that lock.
You are not buying the rights to that file, nor are you buying the link to that file. In fact, a common NFT scam is called a rug pull, in which after an NFT is sold, the seller switches out the file you thought you bought for a picture of a rug, and now you own a very expensive key to an unbreakable lock guarding a picture of a rug.
Not to mention that NFTs are just URLs, which are not very secure at all. In fact, if you had the time and the inclination you could get a copy of every NFT out there.
Much like most trends, at some point people will realize that NFTs are not all that great, and the craziness will fizzle out, which is why hearing that this Philistine just burned a $10 million dollar Frida Kahlo original, so he could sell links to a high-def image of it makes my blood boil.
Fantasmones Siniestros was a page from the artist's diary, and Martin Mobarak, the millionaire entrepreneur who bought it and burned it, justified the action by saying, Frida Kahlo would have liked to have her art destroyed for a good cause. The proceeds from the sale of the NFT will supposedly go to benefit children.
"I hope those who are here can understand, it's to help sick children and victims of domestic abuse," the entrepreneur assured.
Understandably, Kahlo's surviving relatives are not happy with the events. Diego Maria Alvarado Rivera, great-grandson of Diego Rivera, Frida's famous artist husband, said,
It seems to me a medieval act, an atrocious act, it is not necessary to burn something in the physical universe to put it into the metaverse.
Mobarak says that the painting is now "immortalized" as a ultra-high-definition of it appeared on a cryptocurrency portal.
I'm not even a huge Frida Kahlo fan. How many self portraits does a person need to paint? Honestly.
And she and Diego Rivera were a couple of red-hatted communists.
And she has become a symbol of everything that is wrong with the feminist and LGBTQ movements today.
But, even though I don't like what she stood for artistically, morally, or politically, I can't imagine burning a Frida Kahlo original.
Where are the angry LGBTQ and feminist protests over this desecration? Nowhere. They're probably too busy spending thousands of dollars on a key to an unbreakable lock guarding an image of a rug.
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