American artist Beeple became the first to sell a purely digital work of art at auction, grossing more than $ 69.3 million for “Everydays – The First 5000 Days,” an impressive collage format for works of art he created every day for the past 13 years.
The sale also catapulted Beeple, named Mike Winkelmann, to become one of the three most valuable living artists, Christie’s auction house announced, calling it a “turning point in the development of art digital “.
To prove its authenticity, the work presents what is known as a non-fungible testimony that is digitally attached to the artist’s signature and cannot be altered, Christie’s said.
The bidding began at $ 100 at the online auction, which ran from Feb. 25 to Thursday, and eventually the piece sold for $ 69,346,250. Beeple’s work also brought a new class of collector to the centennial auction house: of the 33 active bidders, 91 percent were new to Christie’s buyers and millennials and Generation X was the majority, Christie’s said in a press release. Most bidders were in the Americas, followed by Europe and Asia.
Beeple is a graphic designer living in Charleston, South Carolina, United States. The idea behind the “Everydays” project is to create art on a daily basis, no matter how complex or simple, he said.
“All of these images are made every day from start to finish,” he wrote on his website. “The purpose of this project is to help me improve on different things.”
Some of the first pieces in the collage are simple drawings, while others are more complex three-dimensional representations.
A Christie press release highlighted some of the milestones in the play, including the first piece in the series, which Beeple made on May 1, 2007.
“It simply came to our notice then. It’s a photo of my Uncle Jim, whom I named Uber Jay. I probably would have spent more time on this, if I had known I would finally be part of a piece auctioned by Christie’s! Beeple wrote.
There is also a figure who created “very quickly, in about three minutes at 5 in the morning, just before driving my wife to the hospital to have our first child” on September 18, 2013, she said. .
Although digital art has been around for decades, the concern to verify its authenticity means that collectors have not valued it as the most traditional work.
But, Christie’s said, the “recent introduction of non-expendable tokens (NFT) and blockchain technology has allowed collectors and artists to verify the rightful ownership and authenticity of digital works of art.”
“Every day: the first 5000 days will be delivered directly from Beeple to the buyer, accompanied by a unique NFT encrypted with the artist’s unforgettable signature and uniquely identified in the blockchain,” the auction house added. .
Blockchain technology is also used in the world of cryptocurrencies to verify transactions and NFTs have recently become holders as famous investors approach them.
“NFTs are really an interesting phenomenon here in the art world, because digital art has been something that the traditional art world has had a hard time selling and frankly hasn’t had as much interest in selling it traditionally. “Tim Schneider, art publishing company at Artnet News, told Al Jazeera. “This has really turned around this whole number of how you can make something that can be replicated infinitely work more like paintings and sculptures, which are scarce objects to which an air of exclusivity can be created.”
“NFTs are a mechanism that basically allows you to treat digital files like traditional works of art, and I think that makes the art world much more comfortable with them, at least on one level,” Schneider added.
The sale of Beeple’s artwork was also news after Christie’s announced it would accept the Ether cryptocurrency as payment for the art. However, the auction house has not said whether the winning bid paid off in cryptography.
Schneider said the increase in NFTs has been driven by a new class of collectors.
“The people who are pushing these prices are the ‘cryptocurrencies,’ who have stakes in bitcoins, in Ether, in cryptocurrencies, and they see that this kind of digital asset is something that interests and understands them, and they’re willing to spend money on much more than, say, a sculpture by Jeff Koons or something like that, ”he explained.
Beeple has worked with several high-profile brands and artists throughout his career, including SpaceX, Apple, Nike, and Louis Vuitton, as well as Eminem, Nicki Minaj, One Direction, Justin Bieber, and Katy Perry, among others.