Created over 5,000 days by the groundbreaking artist, this monumental collage was the first purely digital artwork (NFT) ever offered at Christie’s. Mike Winkelmann, aka the digital artist Beeple, posted a new work of art online on 1 May 2007. He did the same thing the next day and the next, and the next one after that, creating and posting a brand-new digital picture, or ‘everyday’ as he called it, every single day for 13-and-a-half years. Now those individual pieces have been brought together in EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS, a unique work in the history of digital art.
Digital image sold for over $69 million by Christie’s; Photo: Handout, Christie’s Auction House / AFP
Although this digital artwork – a collage of over 5,000 individual digital images published by Beeple daily on Tumblr – could in principle be easily recreated at home on a computer, the work realized a record value of $69,346,250 at Christie’s auction. Marking two industry firsts, Christie’s is the first major auction house to offer a purely digital work with a unique NFT (Non-fungible token) — effectively a guarantee of its authenticity — and to accept cryptocurrency, in this case Ether, in addition to standard forms of payment for the singular lot.
Read more about this great auction premiere on the Christie’s website and in the Tages-Anzeiger. And here you can watch live as the artist follows the auction and rejoices over the final sale price.
