Briefly:
- Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique digital assets that are commonly used to represent works of art and collectibles.
- The recent NFT boom has seen some of them sell for over $1 million apiece, with one selling for nearly $70 million.
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are changing the way we think about art, and investors are starting to take notice.
Last year, NFTs came to the forefront of the crypto space. Cryptographically unique tokens make it possible to create a real scarcity of digital objects, and artists have taken advantage of the opportunity provided by the technology.
2022 has seen a significant surge in interest in NFTs, with Google search interest in the term at its highest ever and NFT marketplaces like Nifty Gateway and OpenSea seeing record trading volumes.
But it’s not just interest that’s growing. Nine of the ten most valuable NFTs of all time have traded in the past six months, indicating serious investor appetite.
With that in mind, we'll take a look at ten of the most ridiculously expensive NFTs ever sold and leave it to you to judge their true value.
What is the picture "Everydays: The First 5000 Days"?
This digital collage consists of 5,000 digital drawings. Starting on May 1, 2007, Mike Winkelmann created a drawing every day until, 13.5 years later, he collected 5,000 images. The artist combined his works into one aesthetic whole in no particular order (not taking into account chronology). When you zoom in, you can see each drawing in detail. These are abstract, fantastic, grotesque, sometimes absurd, deeply personal and sometimes reflective of current events in the world digital images that have already gained popularity in the virtual space.
Beeple's very first drawing as part of this project was a sketch of his uncle Jim, whom the artist nicknamed Uber Jay. Describing this piece of collage, Mike admitted that he probably would have spent more time on the drawing if he had known that it would eventually be part of the work offered at Christie's auction.
Another of his drawings, resembling a little man and made in 3D, was created in the morning before Winkelmann took his wife to the hospital. Another example of an image in a collage is a drawing of former US Vice President Mike Pence, who had a fly land on his head during a debate that day, which Beeple reflected in the painting in a grotesque and surreal manner.
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How to live with Beeple for 3 weeks and not go crazy.
5000 pictures (actually more), a couple of dozen articles, many works by other digital artists, games, films and cartoons - I looked through all of this to understand who Beeple is, what he did, why and who decided to collect what everyone can be seen on Instagram.
Beeple, or “you can do that too.”
Everyone already knows that his name is Mike Winkelman, and that he sold his digital work for $69 million. To be more precise, for 69.3. Mike was born on June 20, 1981 in the village of Nord Fond Du Lac, where there are only 5,000 inhabitants. His father —
an electrical engineer whose mother worked in a nursing home. Mike studied here, and in 2003 he graduated from the 12th grade of a local school. That is, he is essentially an ordinary village guy.
This is what the village of North Fond Di Lac, where Beeple grew up, looks like on Google Maps.
The school where he studied
And now -
tadams!
Beeple studied drawing for only 2 years, his education is engineering, in the field of computers. He received it from Purdue University in Wisconsin. And most importantly, until recently, Beeple did not position himself as an artist at all. Designer, clip maker -
yes, but artist
-
no.
Beeple worked as a website builder for a while, but it was pretty boring. Beeple was 25 and searching for himself. Perhaps it was this article, published on January 7, 2007, that he skimmed https://www.jessicaswift.com/2007/01/07/200717tom-judd-illustrator-extraordinaire-html/
AND —
bingo!
—
the idea was born. She was, of course, not exactly born to him. Actually, this is what artists have always done in one way or another. But it is unlikely that Beeple delved into historical research. But he learned that Tom Judd drew a picture every day and compiled a sketch book of 365 pages. And I decided to take on the challenge.
Tom Judd.
“Everyday” On May 1, 2007, he posted the first picture on his website. It's small, Beeple's individual works are generally small, and it's his Uncle Jim.
Hand on heart, let's say that this is not a masterpiece. But from that day on, no matter what happened in his life, he methodically posted one picture on the website, and then on Instagram. During this time, he mastered the Cinema 4D program, some other graphic editors, began making videos for various projects, including for Possible Productions, Apple, SpaceX, Louis Vuitton, Justin Bieber and others, got married, had two children, moved to Charleston and , finally began selling his work using tokens. But every day, regardless of work, wedding, moving, birth of children, another picture appeared on Beeple’s website. Almost 14 years passed like this.
One of Beeple's most famous short films of 2015.
Mike Winkelmann on February 24, 2022 in Charleston, South Carolina. (Photo by Scott Winkelmann / Scott Winkelmann / AFP)
He's an ordinary guy. He lives in a spacious house, which is typical by US standards, with ordinary furniture. His work place is next to the bathroom. There is a hole in the wall into which the cables from the monitors and keyboard go. The computers themselves stand on a specially made board right above the bathtub, because they get terribly hot from constant and powerful rendering. He dresses quite simply, very classically, and drives (at least until today he drove) an old Toyota Corolla, although before these auctions, he had already sold his works for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He even chose his nickname in honor of a cute soft toy. This one.
Even though he seems to be an artist, there are no paintings in his house. Instead, there are two televisions hanging on the wall, operating without sound.
What? Strange? Many of you might say, “He's almost like me, a simple guy, shy at his first celebrity party, happy to have Seann Lennon himself as a friend.”
What did Beeple sell?
Before us is an impressively sized canvas, sewn like a patchwork quilt from small colorful rectangles. And there are more than 5000 of these rectangles. Everything that was drawn from May 1, 2007 until the moment it was put up for auction. I don’t know whether Christie’s specialists went into the study of each picture. Now critics already see sexist or racist connotations in some of them. It’s unlikely that Beeple is an anti-feminist or a racist, it’s just that society has changed over 14 years and has become more sensitive to jokes. And Beeple has a great sense of humor, although sometimes very straightforward.
Does size matter?
When we see a mosaic of pictures assembled into one collage, it seems to us that it is something huge, huge, almost endless. Let's see if this is true. Beeple's canvas size in pixels is 21069x21069. How much it? If you print the collage and hang it on the wall, you will get 7.5 x 7.5 meters. About that.
"Wow!" —
you say.
Wow. But there were also larger “wow” ones. “The Princess of Dreams” by Mikhail Vrubel -
14x7.5 meters, “Marriage in Cana of Galilee” by Paolo Verenese
-
9.9x6.9 meters, “The Bayeux Tapestry”, woven in the 11th century, is 70 meters long, although it is only wide 50 cm.
1. -Beeple “Everydays – The First 5000 Days”; 2 -
M. Vrubel.
Princess Dream; 3 -
Paolo Veronese.
Marriage in Cana of Galilee. 4 -
The Bayeux Tapestry, when cut and assembled into a rectangle and an enlarged fragment of the tapestry.
Maybe 5000 images collected into one canvas is a record? No. At least in 2014, the famous Soviet-American cultural researcher Lev Manovich presented viewers with a huge collage collected from 13,000 images. These are photographs and pictures that Kiev residents who were in the center and near the center of Kyiv during the days of the revolutionary events posted on Instagram.
Lev Manovich, Alice Tiefenthal, Mehrdad Yazdani, Jay Chou. Exceptional and everyday: 144 hours in Kyiv. year 2014. Photo: Cristina Magyare
I don’t know what size Beeple’s high-cuts are or whether he has them, but on the Internet he offers his fans small pictures that can be divided into several topics.
What is Beeple drawing?
Let's start looking at what Beeple draws. Well, first of all, the word “paints” doesn’t really apply to what an artist does. It works in the Cinema4 program, which allows you to create three-dimensional models, experiment with materials and textures, and animate the image.
Sometimes he uses ready-made 3D models from various libraries, sometimes he models himself, but he can also use a 3D scanner, as, for example, in this case:
Beeple approaches his work professionally and spares no expense on equipment. He sends the finished scene to be rendered (we remember that he uses the bathroom for this). The artist often refines the final image in Adobe Illistrator. The result is, for example, a picture like this.
What can we say, looking at this very simple, seemingly simple work? To understand its actual content, you need to seriously immerse yourself in the study of American culture, the peculiarity of which is that it is very young.
Most artists have a cultural background. But among European and Russian people, it often contains an appeal to the imagery of the masters of the Italian or Northern Renaissance, classicism, romanticism, Byzantine icons and mosaics, in a word, to the imagery of the masters of the past. And we know that their customers were people belonging to the church and power elite.
American art has so consciously built its all-American, democratic identity that there is practically no elitism in it. Elements of mass culture, kitsch and eclecticism exist here in complete equality with the so-called “high style”. Their use since the time of Andy Warhol has not been considered something shameful. In this sense, Beeple is a very American artist.
1.
-
Kyande Wiley.
Equestrian portrait of King Philip II (Michael Jackson); 2. —
Playboy Bunny;
3. —
Jeff Koons. Balloon dog.
First of all, the overt satirical nature of the works is very American. “Hey” (translated as “hello” but with a slight frivolous connotation) —
This is a caricature of Trump as an overweight, middle-aged man with the face of Buzz Lightyear.
The use of the equestrian European portrait as a caricature mocking pretensions to greatness was familiar to American art even before Beeple. Kyande Wiley, a famous African-American artist who painted, among other things, ceremonial portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama, has a whole series of similar portraits.
Another Beeple reference —
to one of the most expensive artists of our time, Jeff Koons and his iconic “Balloon Dog,” the hallmark of American culture.
And, of course, Playboy Bunny Bunny ears complete with carrots as a hint to the sex scandals associated with the personality of Donald Trump - Buzz Lightyear.
Buzz Lightyear with the body of a naked middle-aged man and Cattelan's banana glued to his stomach. The work has an eloquent title. "MOMA $HIT"
Another Buzz Trump. It stands in the hall of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) as a mockery of the commercialization of art and power. New hero —
This is not Michelangelo's beautiful David.
This is a simple, not very intelligent, rude and genderless ordinary citizen who takes at face value everything he is told -
a banana stuck with tape, the image of a plastic hero, openness of elections and much more.
Buzz Lightyear, the hero of the cult cartoon “Toy Story” and “Buzz Lightyear and the Star Crew,” is generally Beeple’s favorite character. This is no accident. He is ranked #1 among the "20 Greatest Pixar Characters" and is one of the "Greatest Movie Characters". Perhaps this is strange for a middle-aged European and Russian viewer to read. But those under 30, especially Americans, take such ratings extremely seriously. In a sense Buzz —
these are the basic foundations of modern culture.
2019
I already wrote that the film production of the conventional Pixar and Disney shapes the future and said that the generation that grew up on Pixar cartoons will hang this art on the walls and invest money in it. That time has come. And Beeple's success —
also a product of the influence of Pixar's visuals and philosophy.
DAY 5000
Beeple generally makes extensive use of iconic children's cartoon characters in his statements, immersing them in a completely non-children's environment.
Pikachu, representing what Beeple calls INFECTED CULTURE.
Death of Homer Simpson
Shrek got it too. SHREK-THEMED DEATHCORE ALBUM ART
Captioning a picture
is
an important part of Beeple's work.
The scandalous details of this image become clear once we see the title -
DISNEYWORLD 2022 (Disney World 2020). Many of the artist’s peers who have children are familiar with dissatisfaction with how the philosophy of this giant corporation influences the new generation.
Another constant theme of Beeple —
shocking use of images of real-life modern politicians.
Trump was especially lucky. The number of his images is confidently in the lead. In addition to Trump, there are monsters with the faces of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Kim Jong-un and many other representatives of the highest strata of the political elite. They appear in the form of insatiable spiders, ugly or ridiculous monsters. This is also a very American phenomenon, especially now that society is politicized. Actually, every picture of Beeple is
a reflection of some momentary events, a quick reaction to what is happening.
Birth of a nation. BIRTH OF A NATION
Beeple constantly combines images of political rivals, hinting that both are birds of a feather and should not be deluded.
Kim Jong-un and Elon Musk are frequent subjects in Beeple's works.
Here, he also paradoxically combined the Korean leader with symbols of Musk’s space ambitions, as if hinting that both are beyond reality and, perhaps, therefore equally dangerous to humanity. But it’s not just politics and Disney-Pixar cartoons that abound on Beeple’s Instagram. He has a wide range of citing cultural symbols. This is a reference to Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, to Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Elysium, The Matrix, Godzilla, cult games and much more. Beeple often quotes not only famous films, games, and established images, but also modern digital artists who inspire him with their discoveries. Sometimes quotes are very literal. He is especially inspired by Russian masters Andrey Surnov, Oleg Vdovenko and Alexey Andreev.
“Revolt” by Andrei Surnov prompted Mike Winkelman to come up with several interpretations of the confrontation between the mass unconscious and the Ordnung. I present the two most literal ones here.
Development of the “Avatar” theme by Andrei Surnov in the works of Beeple (hello to Cameron, Jonathan Swift and tales of giants).
There are many variations on the theme of Oleg Vdovenko’s works.
Reminiscences of Oleg Vdovenko’s work “Grandmothers”.
Giant pig in the city —
a paraphrase of the work of Alexey Andreev, the Swedish legend of Gulsun, the Irish
legend
of Mac Dato and a response to real events in the city of Palm Bay, Florida, when a huge pig scared residents while walking through the streets.
1. —
Alexey Andreev.
Recycling; 2. -
Beeple.
BEAUTIFUL MESS; 3. -
Beeple. HUMAN ADAPTATION
Beeple, or Mike Winkelman —
a well-watched person who lives in the midst of Internet resources and Internet news.
His work shows that he views an incredible amount of visual content -
paintings by old masters and modern artists, animated films, legendary and new feature films, and follows the successes of Elon Musk (they mutually troll each other). Beeple is always up to date with political events and is well acquainted with how propaganda and political shows work. Reminiscences of works by Simon Stalenhag, Alejandro Burdisio, Igor Morski, Andrey Surnov, Oleg Vdovenko, Alexey Andreev indicate that Mike feels the context of events and is at the epicenter of understanding the world through images.
TAKE WHAT YOU WANT.
Take what you want. An excellent example of how Mike interprets a favorite theme of artists of the past today. Before us is a new Judith, and maybe a new Salome. The artist makes fun of how so-called children's desires and social infantilism are exploited and preserved in society. The artist's reaction is immediate. Every day create an image with a semantic core, some kind of composition and color scheme -
the matter is extremely complex.
And here two factors played a huge role. The first is
innate artistry, which awakens in Mike only at the moment of creativity.
Friends note that it looks like two people live in it and jokingly call it Hyde and Jekyll. The second factor is
fast and structured engineering thinking. His approach to creating images is more technical than artistic. He is not very concerned about colors, subtle emotional undertones, or the beauty of the world. His approach to work is functional - to present his point of view as clearly and provocatively as possible.
WAT is
one of Beeple's most provocative works, satirizing the traditional foundations of American identity - the sacred turkey on Thanksgiving Day.
The title of the work is
both a slang form of the disgusting What (What is this?!) and the abbreviation World Against Terrorism with a reference to the famous slogan Make love, not war and the actions of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who demonstrated the night of love.
Mike Winkelman is a completely upstanding citizen, a wonderful husband and father, and a responsible homeowner. The neighbors have no idea (at least they didn't) about what he's really doing. But for him there is nothing in art that cannot be ridiculed. No restrictions. His Instagram —
it's basically an American Charlie Hebdo, but very individual. Beeple responds, first of all, to what excites or seems interesting to him personally.
DANCE
It is unlikely that Charlie Hebdo, for example, would have reacted to a Boston Dynamics video with dancing robots, and Mike made these robots perform a striptease. Perhaps, ridiculing how today the world has stopped thinking about great achievements and turns everything, the most advanced achievements of scientific and engineering thought, into momentary entertainment.
METAKOVAN. One of the largest Beeple collectors acted under this nickname.
But, let’s be honest, if we consider each of Mike’s works separately, they do not amount to a masterpiece. Most of all, they look like a frame accidentally snatched from a blockbuster. Neither compositionally, nor coloristically, nor even in the set of symbols, they are not very different from the works of novice digital artists with whom the Internet is flooded. I do not question the skill of the visualizer and animator here. The question is an artistic decision. It does not shine with originality. So what is the secret of Mike Winkelman's success? About it —
in the next part of the review.
Here are a few links from a long list of places where you can learn more about Beeple.
- https://www.instagram.com/beeple_crap/
- https://biographydaily.com/2021/03/15/who-is-mike-winkelmann-aka-beeple/
- https://news.artnet.com/opinion/beeple-everydays-review-1951656
- https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35500985/who-is-beeple-mike-winkelmann-nft-interview/
- https://www.beeple-crap.com/everydays
- https://www.christies.com/features/Monumental-collage-by-Beeple-is-first-purely-digital-artwork-NFT-to-come-to-auction-11510-7.aspx?sc_lang=en# FID-11510
- https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-beeple-crashed-the-art-world
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Winkelmann
- https://www.facebook.com/beeple/
- https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/26/digital-artist-beeple-common-misunderstanding-about-nfts.html
Who is Mike Winkelmann (Beeple)?
Mike Winkelmann is a graphic designer and animator from the United States. He creates a variety of comic and phantasmagoric works, which he devotes to current political and social topics, and also sometimes uses references to pop culture phenomena. Based on Everydays: The First 5000 Days, you can trace how his work has changed. At the beginning of this long journey of 13.5 years, the drawings were simple. Beeple then began working in 3D, experimenting with abstract themes, color and shape. Also, if earlier the paintings mainly reflected Winkelmann’s personal events and everyday life, in the last five years he has focused more on current events in the world.
Mike Winkelmann has collaborated with world-famous brands (including Louis Vuitton, Apple, Nike), and worked on visual effects for performances by Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Childish Gambino and Katy Perry. As an artist, Beeple is very popular in the digital environment. At the time of the auction, he already had 1.8 million followers on Instagram, and after the high-profile sale of the painting “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” their number increased to two million.
Interest in NFTs is growing
A set of non-fungible Beeple tokens called 2020 Collection is the second collection of the author exhibited on Nifty Gateway. The first one came out before the US presidential election. One of Crossroad's works, an animation that changes depending on who wins the election, sold for $66,000.
During the auction, the cost of some works reached $7,777, for example, an image of Hillary Clinton in a giant fur suit in the form of Spongebob - Spongebob Hillarypants.
The popularity of non-fungible tokens is gaining momentum. Earlier, the editors of BeInCrypto reported that the trading volume of NFT tokens on the SuperRare platform exceeded $4 million.
Will the NFT industry be able to displace DeFi? Read the opinions of experts in our article!
