When digital art as a new form of art started to become more popular, collectors were sceptical about their values. But their potential has suddenly been proven by a recent auction record achieved by the artwork Everydays: The First 5000 Days (2021) by Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple. It was auctioned at Christie’s in an online auction on 11 March 2021 for a record sale of USD 69 Million.

The First 5000 Days @ Beeple

Beeple has already drawn collectors’ attention earlier for his other digital artwork Crossroads auctioned for USD 6.6 Million at Nifty Gateway, an online crypto digital art marketplace, on 21 February. The work’s value was jetted up for almost 1,000 times from USD 67,000 as paid by its previous owner in October 2020. Beeple created this 10-second video work ahead of the 2020 US Presidential Election in two versions: one featuring a victorious Donald Trump if he had won the elections; the other featuring the unclothed Trump after his defeat, lying naked on the sidewalk – this is the existing version.

Everydays: The First 5000 Days consists of a digital collage of 5,000 images, made every day since 2013. The artist has stitched together recurring themes and colour schemes to create an aesthetic whole. Organised in loose chronological order, zooming in on individual pieces revealing abstract, fantastical, grotesque and absurd pictures, alongside current events and deeply personal moments. Society’s obsession and fear of technology, desire for and resentment of wealth and America’s recent political turbulence appear frequently throughout the work. “I almost look at it now like I’m a political cartoonist,” Beeple explains. “Except instead of doing sketches, I’m using the most advanced 3D tools to make comments on current events, almost in real-time.”

Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple

Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple, is a South Carolina-based digital pictures artist, visionary and often irreverent. He launched his meteoric rise to the top of the digital art world thanks to a large fan base and a famously prolific work. As part of his project Everydays, he creates and publishes a new digital artwork every day. He has attracted 2.5 million followers across social channels and has collaborated with high profile global brands ranging like Louis Vuitton and Nike, as well as performing artists like Katy Perry and Childish Gambino.

Beeple’s work is not just a digital art, but a new form of digital asset which is backed up by the crypto technology. NFT is the abbreviation of “Non-Fungible Token”, which means this is unique and irreplaceable, unlike other traditional online art that can be easily reproduced. An NFT is a registration of ownership of a digital asset on a blockchain, proving the authenticity and ownership of these collectibles, including but not just limited to digital art. Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, is also selling his first tweet as an NFT in a timed charity auction.

Crossroads @ Beeple

The use of blockchain implies that artist’s content can be sold globally in any marketplace. It enables collectors and artists alike to verify the rightful owner and authenticity of digital works. And most importantly, it also enables royalty fees to be paid to the artists every time the NFT is sold.

Joining this booming market and organising its first-ever fully digital NFT art auction in March 2021, Christie’s became the first major auction house to step into the emerging crypto art market. Without a predetermined estimate, the work didn’t have a price range. Bidding started on 25 February at USD 100 and reached USD 1 Million after only eight minutes. On 11 March, there were over hundred and eighty bids in the final hour. An hour before the sale closed, bids were floating at about USD 14 Million; when there were just second left on the clock, to USD 50 Million. The official hammer was USD 60.25 Million, plus an extra USD 9 Million for Christie’s, which brought the sale to a record of USD 69 Million. The buyer Vignesh Sundaresan, a crypto asset investor known by the pseudonym “Metakovan,” founder and funder of Metapurse, the largest NFT fund in the world, who outbid in the last thirty seconds Chinese cryptocurrency creator Justin Sun.

According to Christie’s, this was unprecedented in modern auction history, not only for NFT but also for a new artist. The result was the third-highest auction price achieved for a living artist after Jeff Koons and David Hockney. Also, as a comparison, major works by masters of art history such as Van Gogh and Picasso saw respective sales of “only” USD 16 Million and USD 15.6 Million recently.

Not only Beeple broke the digital art sales record, but he also became one of the top three most valuable living artists, according to Christie’s.