In a cluttered Wimbledon art studio nestled between a vegan dog bakery and a Pilates gym, a revolution was born. They call it Crypto-Baroque Art, a lavish, chaotic, gold-leaf-encrusted movement that answers the question few asked: What if Caravaggio had a Ledger wallet and a WiFi connection?
What Even Is Crypto-Baroque Art?
Imagine a chandelier made of NFTs. Picture cherubs painted in oil—but holding iPhones. Now add neon lighting, QR codes etched into marble, and a persistent undertone of existential dread about market volatility. That’s the Crypto-Baroque: a movement blending the theatrical grandeur of the 17th century with the pixelated anxiety of 21st-century crypto culture.
“It’s like Versailles had a panic attack during a Coinbase outage,” said lead artist and self-proclaimed movement founder, Magnus von Glitch. He gestures dramatically at a canvas where a digital David slays a blockchain Goliath with a USB-C cord. “The Baroque was about drama. Crypto is also about drama. Sometimes financial ruin. Sometimes euphoria. Often both before breakfast.”
Meet the Artists
Aside from von Glitch—whose real name is Kevin but who insists on being called “The Algorithm Whisperer”—the movement includes several other rising stars:
Luna Baudrillard, who uses discarded Ethereum mining rigs to create kinetic sculptures that spin aggressively whenever Elon Musk tweets.
Claude deCash, a French-British artist who only paints while trading meme coins. He once accidentally sold a painting of The Last Supper with all the apostles replaced by Pepe the Frog for 7 ETH.
And of course, Janet Delirium, whose magnum opus, St. Sebastian Gets Hacked, features a glowing figure pierced by phishing emails rather than arrows. It recently won the prestigious “TurnUp Prize” (no relation to the Turner Prize, but it does come with a gift card to Woolworths and a commemorative NFT of a garden rake).
A Movement Is Born
It all started when the artists were locked in their studio during a particularly long power outage caused by a rogue toaster NFT experiment. With no internet and no working Ring lights, they turned to candles, powdered wigs, and an old projector showing Barry Lyndon on loop.
“We went fully analog. It was terrifying,” says Delirium, clutching a baroque selfie stick (a selfie stick encrusted with rhinestones and modeled after a candelabrum). “But beautiful. That’s when Magnus painted The Fall of Bitcoin at Mount Doom, and we knew we were onto something.”
Famous Works
• Ophelia, But She’s Mining Dogecoin by Luna Baudrillard — a floating Ophelia surrounded by fluorescent GPUs.
• Still Life with Fruit and NFT Receipt by von Glitch — a digital print on canvas that includes a QR code leading nowhere and a banana duct-taped to a broken smartphone.
• The Ecstasy of St. Vitalik — Claude deCash’s homage to Bernini, where Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin ascends to heaven on a cloud of Twitter likes.
Controversy and Fame
Critics are split. Some call Crypto-Baroque “an opulent joke about late-stage capitalism,” others call it “a TikTok trend with delusions of grandeur.” But gallery owners are thrilled.
“I’ve never sold so many paintings that double as QR codes,” said one art dealer while vacuuming gold glitter from a velvet NFT kiosk. “It’s performance art, it’s satire, and it’s very, very shiny.”
Final Thoughts
Whether it’s the future of art or just a very expensive inside joke among crypto bros with art degrees, Crypto-Baroque is undeniably entertaining. Like a rococo fever dream with blockchain receipts, it’s confusing and fabulous.
As Magnus von Glitch concluded while spray-painting a Bitcoin logo over a fake Rembrandt:
“We’re not just artists. We’re… decorative anarchists.”
Then, I said I wouldn’t mention it, but it was too funny not to include, he tripped over a VR headset and fell headfirst into a pile of gilded USB drives.