Beeple: The First 5000 Days

Being a pioneer of digital art promotion – Designcollector is always looking for the breakaway artists whose intuition way ahead of the main peloton. Groundbreaking digital artist Mike Winkelmann known as Beeple is one of them. Since 2007 Mike has created 5,000+ digital artworks by following a simple rule: one image per day. The diligence paid off when the rise of NFT trading burst like a fresh wave onto the digital art scene just at the moment of another lockdown after another lockdown during 2020. Beeple played a huge role in reinforcing beliefs in quite an ephemeral way of selling unique artworks for cryptocurrency by imprinting them “forever” into Ethereum blockchain.

His January’s drop of a dozen phygital artworks (non-fungible token JPG + physical collectible including a certificate “signed” by artist’s hair in a capsule) rocketed the NFT scene by a one week auction on Nifty Gateways platform.

And here come Christie’s what means art institutions started to look (if not late) onto the opportunity to catch an NFT wave by putting Beeple’s EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS – a huge stitched image featuring all images he created over 13 years. Organised in loose chronological order, zooming in on individual pieces reveals abstract, fantastical, grotesque, and absurd pictures, alongside current events and deeply personal moments. The NFT is minted on another platform Makersplace and is available for bidding on Christie’s website

“The notable difference between the pictures from Day 1 (1 May, 2007) and Day 5,000 (7 January, 2021) reveals Beeple’s immense evolution as an artist. At the project’s inception, Everydays consisted of basic drawings. Once Beeple started working in 3D, they took on abstract themes, colour, form, and repetition. In the last five years, however, his digital pictures have became increasingly timely, often reacting to current events.” says Christie’s in its groundbreaking article