Beeple: Everydays, the First 5000 Days

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For Christie’s, Beeple composed a mosaic made from his first 5,000 “Everydays”—but no LCD screen will accompany the sale. Unlike the first NFT that Christie’s sold in October—the Robert Alice canvas that happened to come with an NFT—this would be Christie’s first strictly digital piece. In short, an auction house founded in London in 1766 was about to sell a JPEG. Winkelmann started "Everydays," which involved creating a piece of art every day, on May 1, 2007. Since then, he has not missed a day; Winkelmann has discussed keeping it up even on his wedding day and the day of his children's births.

Desk, Coin. "NFT Artist Beeple Opens Digital Art Gallery in Charleston, SC". Markets Insider. Business Insider . Retrieved March 26, 2023. Less than six months ago, Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, was unknown to the art world. Cuthbertson, Anthony (March 24, 2021). "NFT millionaire Beeple says crypto art is bubble and will 'absolutely go to zero' ". The Independent. Archived from the original on May 14, 2022 . Retrieved January 5, 2022. The rules for my Everydays are that they are something done start to finish that day, posted somewhere on the internet before midnight,” Winkelmann says. “In the beginning, they were much more abstract, more about colour and composition, repetition and stuff like that. Now they’re much more literal and a lot of the time they’re about current events. I recently did a picture about Daft Punk, because Daft Punk just broke up. So things like that are very timely.”Winkelmann grew up in North Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, a town of 5,000 people about an hour outside of Milwaukee. His dad was an electrical engineer; his mother worked at a local senior center. Winkelmann graduated from Purdue in 2003 with a computer-science degree but no artistic training. (He chose the name Beeple after a 1980s toy whose nose lit up in response to light and sound, which was loosely connected to the kind of early art he was making.) In early 2021, Beeple released the 5000 Day Selects as a commemorative piece to the Christie's auction with 105 editions. Winkelmann is based in North Charleston, South Carolina, having moved from Wisconsin in 2017. He is married and has two children. Sex wasn’t Madonna’s only controversial foray into art. Last year, she teamed up with digital artist Beeple to release a line of three NFTs (non-fungible tokens) based on a 3D scan of the singer in the nude. The NFTs show Madonna giving birth to creatures like butterflies, centipedes and even a tree.

Aesthetic judgment is in the eye of the beholder,” Davis said. “We want there to be a dialogue and we want people to see this as worthy of criticism. That means it’s art. If you have a strong opinion about it, it has value. We’re all about giving visibility to this artist who clearly has something provocative to say and is also having a financially meaningful impact.”

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Despite the attention and his growing reach, Winkelmann never considered selling any of his work. Or rather, he didn’t really know how to sell it. This is a common problem. As John Crain, the cofounder of the NFT marketplace SuperRare, explained: “A lot of supertalented digital artists don’t fit the model for the contemporary art world. They don’t go to Art Basel. They’re active on GIF communities. They weren’t monetizing the work as fine art. They might have sold T-shirts on a Linktree.” Crow, Kelly (April 11, 2022). "The Latest Sign That Beeple Has Truly Arrived: An Exhibit at an Italian Art Museum". Wall Street Journal . Retrieved October 21, 2022.