Everydays: The First 5000 Days by Beeple has shocked the world today with the final bid recorded at $69 million.
The NFT digital artwork has been the subject of several ‘firsts’ – the first NFT to be sold at auction by the iconic Christie’s, as well as one of the most expensive pieces of digital art ever.
Created over 5,000 days, this monumental collage is the first purely digital artwork ever offered at Christie’s. It was offered as a single lot auction sale from 25 February to 11 March.
After a flurry of more than 180 bids in the final hour, it’s final sale was $69.3 million with fees.
It has become one of the most expensive pieces of digital art ever created, and makes Beeple one of the most valuable living artists in the world.
The Artwork
The story behind this piece is simple but extensive. Beeple posted a new work of art online. He did the same thing the next day and the next, and the next one after that, creating and posting a brand-new digital picture, or ‘everyday’ as he called it, every single day for 13 and a half years.
It was all collated for this piece and became the most talked about and desired NFT ever created. Christie’s described the artwork as “one of the most unique bodies of work to emerge in the history of digital art”.
The Artist
Beeple (Mike Winkelmann) (born June 20, 1981), is an American digital artist and graphic designer.
A lot of Winkelmann’s work features popular Disney characters in futuristic/dystopian settings and situations. In December of 2019, he posted a short animation of a robot dog with a Baby Yoda head eating the entrails of babies on Instagram, titled ‘Stray Baby Yoda Dogs.”
The artist’s style is almost a modern take on political cartoons, but instead of sketching in the traditional method of cartoonists, he is using advanced digital tools to comment on current events, as and when they happen.
Winkelmann uses Cinema 4D for most of his digital artwork. He has sorted his Everydays by rounds, each round is a collection of the work created within a certain period of time and medium.
This feels like a monumental day in the world of NFT, in an industry that has exploded so quickly – it is showing no sign of slowing down.
More on this story to follow…
