Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days” sells for nearly $70M
Record-Breaking Christie’s Sale!
We felt that we needed to publish an extra mid-week edition of our newsletter to bring you the startling news of Beeple’s sale. For those of you who missed it, Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple, created an image seaming together 5000 images which he created over 5000 days or approximately 13 and a half years. His images encompass topics which include current events, political cartoons, famous entertainers in both movies and music, space, crypto world, fantasy, meta-verse scenes and more.
Christie’s auction house opened the auction two weeks ago on February 25 and it closed this morning ending a bidding war between two billionaire collectors at $69.3M. This sum is mind-boggling. To put it in perspective, Beeple just became the third most-expensive living artist after Jeff Koons and David Hockney. His NFT artwork gained more than artworks sold by Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali, or Paul Gauguin.
What does this mean for the artworld?
It means that digital art is gaining recognition and that there is likely to be a shift in the future for how art is bought, sold, and displayed. Digital artists will probably be pushed to “come into the physical realm” as Beeple suggests, while traditional artists will have to think about digitizing their artworks or collaborating with digital artists. This is bound to bring about an explosion of creativity and excitement to the art world.
“I feel super lucky. I didn’t see this coming.” -Beeple