a-brief-history-of-pepe-art

in 2016, what might be called an interstitial zone of the hypermeme era, "rare pepes" were first plopped onto a platform built on top of the bitcoin chain called counterparty, eventually generating 1,774 cards between sept. 2016 and feb. 2018. somewhere near the end there, "fake rares" emerged as a means to do "hoodrat shit with your friends," which it remains.

in sept. 2021, five years after the issuance of RAREPEPE, the pepe pawn shop launched and began commissioning and curating a new collection of fake rares, some 350+ currently. also lately, pepe's creator, matt furie, has been releasing his own (unassociated) rare pepe cards, each a delightful animated short.

pepe art -- all the rares, fakes, commons, danks, pegz, homers, purples, blank-kamotos, nardo grails, daily smols and smowls and drunken telegram auctions -- is an interconnected and random web of both external and internal references. a of tower of babel of memes. totally unknowable. forever enjoyable.

pepe the frog's history on the internet is famously messy, arcing from being a harmless little creation of a nice west coast artist to unwitting avatar of darkness, wrapping a fun frog all the way around digitized human nature.

let's take a little look at the evolution of pepe card art. here's the entire first rare pepe series, cards 1-50, all issued in sept. 2016. what a ride:

and here, the final series of rare pepes, cards 1-25, from feb. 2018. blockchain references had waned, anime meta was apparently ascendant, styles diversified, 'craft' had improved significantly and the card format was now being mostly ignored:

and finally, a look at the present of pepe art. these are the most recent fake rares -- series 8, underway as of writing and curated by vincent van dough. it includes artists from the original rare collection, current pepe-grail craftooors and well-known artists making their first pepe pieces. taken together, it's a beautiful and useful cross-section of the culture, still in progress. an apogee, for now:

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idk wtf but DARKMATTERP won't render on desktop

learn more at fakeraredirectory.com and pepe.wtf

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