'Unfathomable number' - Beeple's digital-only artwork fetches nearly $70 million at Christie's

Record ID: 1605668

  • Title: 'Unfathomable number' - Beeple's digital-only artwork fetches nearly $70 million at Christie's
  • Date: 11th March 2021
  • Summary: CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, UNITED STATES (MARCH 11, 2021) (REUTERS VIA ZOOM) (SOUNDBITE) (ENGLISH) ARTIST, MIKE WINKELMANN, AKA "BEEPLE," SAYING: "There are a lot of people coming into this space and there are, you know, there are thousands of visual artists, and that is something that I sort of really hope comes from this. And I'm going to be pushing for it, is sort of going back actually and looking at the history of digital art over the last 20 years and who were the like sort of major influences and who were like... what happened over the last 20 years? Because, again, digital arts did not start with NFT's [Non-Fungible Tokens], you know five months ago or whenever, you know, three years ago when NFT's were invented. So I think there was no way to collect that work before. And so that's something. But, but it was really influential and it was influential on like everything. Digital artists design websites, they design apps, they design, you know, TV shows, how TV shows look. They design how characters look in movies and in sci-fi and Marvel. That's all digital artists. So they have a huge, huge impact on the visual language of the world. And so I think now being able to collect them and sort of look at them as real artists, I'm super, super excited about."
  • Embargoed: 25th March 2021 21:45
  • Keywords: Beeple Christie's NFT art auction blockchain digital art
  • Location: CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA + NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES / UNDENTIFIED LOCATION
  • City: CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA + NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES / UNDENTIFIED LOCATION
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Art,Arts/Culture/Entertainment,United States
  • Reuters ID: LVA009E3N47YX
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: A digital artwork sold for nearly $70 million at Christie's on Thursday (March 11), in the first ever sale by a major auction house of a piece of art that does not exist in physical form.
    "Everydays - The First 5000 Days" is a digital work by American artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple. It is a collage of 5,000 individual images, which were made one-per-day over more than thirteen years.
    The sale of the work for $69,346,250 put Beeple in the top three most valuable living artists, Christie's said.
    The work is in the form of a new type of digital asset - a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) - meaning it is authenticated by blockchain, which certifies its originality and ownership.
    The market for NFTs has soared in recent months as enthusiasts and investors use spare savings to buy up items that exist online.
    "Digital arts did not start with NFT's [Non-Fungible Tokens]," Beeple told Reuters. But before NFT's certified works, "there was no way to collect that work before," he added.
    Asked what he thought of the multi-million dollar bids on his work, the 39-year-old graphic designer, who has created concert visuals for the likes of Justin Bieber, One Direction and Katy Perry, said he was lost for words.
    "I probably should have put all these interviews off, after a few hours or days or weeks," he said. "It's like an unfathomable number, to be quite honest. It's just crazy."
    For NFTs, the artist's royalties are locked in to the contract: Beeple receives 10% each time the NFT changes hands after the initial sale.
    Various digital objects can be minted as NFTs and traded as assets, including art, sports collectibles, patches of land in virtual worlds, cryptocurrency wallet names and even tweets.
    Art NFTs make up around a quarter of the all-time NFT sales volume ($415 million) according to NonFungibles.com, which aggregates sales history data for the Ethereum blockchain, the most commonly used ledger for recording these types of assets.
    He began his project back in 2007.
    "I started doing a drawing a day," Beeple recounted to Reuters. "And after the first year of doing that… I learned a lot about drawing…. And so I thought maybe I could apply this to, you know, another medium. So I was like, 'well, what if I did a render a day… So I started doing that. And from there I just honestly kind of kept going."
    (Production by: Dan Fastenberg and Elizabeth Howcroft)
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