WHEN BILLIONAIRES BECOME DOGS, ART BASEL GOES BARKING MAD!
WHEN BILLIONAIRES
BECOME DOGS...
ART BASEL GOES BARKING MAD!
Nazli Kok Akbas, Art Editor,
Geneva, Switzerland
I’m not in Miami this year, but sometimes distance clarifies things. From afar one can hear the fair’s loudest statement, not from the boots, not from the record sales, but from Beeple’s android dogs. Their metallic barking has become a kind of conceptual drone above the fair, an unexpectedly precise metaphor for the ideological climate of the contemporary art world.
“Regular Animals” the installation that everyone is talking about, filming, posting, laughing at, or quietly fearing. These dogs are not simply objects, or technological curiosities.In my understanding, they are, in many ways, philosophical propositions of the artist,Beeple.
Photo courtesy of Beeple
Tech bros and artists in the same circus, it is a different century...
This year, Art Basel decided to open a brand- new playground called Zero10, a zone dedicated to digital-era works- AI, NFT, robotics, generative art, and whatever new acronym we are supposed to memorize next.
Beeple, born MIKE WINKELMANN in 1981 in Wisconsin, is a digital artist famous for his daily “Everydays” creations. Instead of bringing screens, Beeple brought … dogs to the Art Basel. Robot dogs with the billionaire faces.
Regular Animals, these dogs don’t just walk, they pose, they record the visitors. They trot around confidently like they own the place, which, considering their celebrity faces, they sort of do.
Each dog wears a silicone mask, disturbingly realistic. There’s Musk the Dog. Zuckerberg the Dog. Bezos the Dog. Picasso and Warhol also show up.
The dogs sometimes “drop” artworks. Yes, drop literally. Just like that. Onto the floor. It looks like some are funny little satirical prints. Some are digital claims, tickets for NFTs. And visitors are fascinating
“Wait… can they really do that?”
This is Beeple’s genius, he makes you laugh first, then realize the joke is on all of us.
Beeple isn’t picking random celebrities. He’s choosing the people who shape the way we see the world, literally. Their platforms control the information we consume, the news we read, even the art we scroll through at 2 a.m.
Those dogs have cameras. They observe us. They follow us. This isn’t just satire, it’s a metaphor for the digital systems that track every move.
These dogs produce art without thinking, feeling, or caring. They make things because they are programmed to.
In 2025 when AI writes novels and compose symphonies, Beeple asks:“If machine can produce art, what happens to the idea of the artist?”
Beeple asks it with a robotic Picasso pooping a printout on the floor: ICONIC!
Photo courtesy of Beeple
The masks looks funny, but also deeply uncomfortable to look at even when seen on the media.That line between humor and horror is exactly where contemporary culture lives right now. Beeple doesn’t hide it, he exaggerates it until no one can pretend not to see it.
I watched many videos that were posted. I was mostly willing to see the faces of the visitors other than “art works” called Regular Animals.
I thought that watching people interact with these dogs would be a performance piece itself! Some visitors laugh instantly and look delighted by the absurdity, while others jump back, especially when the dogs come close to them. Some visitors look serious, trying to look cool while secretly chase the dogs hoping to catch a glimse of them,and a print of course. The young ones looks to adore them. Critics have already started writing long essays about the show.
Everyone was filming or taking photos of them. A new way of discovering artwork was on the scene through the camera. In all the videos I checked, everyone was on their phone contemplating an artwork.
Beeple has achieved the holy grail of art fair success: total domination of the conversation.
He didn’t bring the most expensive work, he brought the one thing no art fair can resist: A spectacle that says something.
By giving Zero10 a prime place in the fair and letting Beeple’s dogs run wild, Art Basel signals a turning point, digital art is not a side act anymore. In fact, it’s becoming the main event.
People want dogs. They want the prints. They want the NFTs. They want the weird the new the slightly disturbing. Visitors are encouraged to ask questions they would rarely ask: Is it the artwork? Is it the print? Is it the system? Is it the performance? Or all of them?
Welcome to contemporary art collecting, you don’t buy the object, you buy the experience (and possibly it’s droppings).
Within hours of the opening, Beeple’s dogs were everywhere on TikTok, Instagram, X, and WhatsApp groups. The memes multiplied faster than the prints were released!
This matters because digital visibility has become part of an artwork’s global life. Beeple knows this better than anyone.
"REGULAR ANIMALS" IS FUNNY?
ITS’S WEIRD?
IT’S UNSETTING?
BENEATH THE SPECTACLE LIES A SHARP TRUTH...
The future is a rather messy hybrid of humans, machines, media, and markets. Beeple’s Android Dogs don't just bark—they reflect.
They observe us, imitate us, and flip our world upside down. Through their absurdity, they reveal something genuine about who we are and the direction of art.
Nazli Kok Akbas, Art Editor, Geneva, Switzerland
Comments
Post a Comment