everydazehaze
In the last week, you might have heard two huge buzz words: Beeple and NFT.
I’m starting a diary to keep tabs on my journey into the NFT Art World and I have no idea what the future holds. Just the way I like it.
The NFT Art World has exploded in the last week. And now everyone is in a tizzy trying to make sense of this strange new world of Cryptoart. NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token, and we’ll break down what exactly that (and Cryptoart) means in future posts in the days to come.
Today, I just want to focus on the big news.
Beeple: The Beginning
One week ago today, a historic piece of art was sold. The piece was created by Mike Winkelmann, 39, a successful digital artist based in South Carolina. He first broke into the art scene as a VJ (a video DJ) mixing cool visuals that ended up attracting the attention of celebrities and allowed him to create concert backdrops for performances by artists like Justin Bieber, Janet Jackson, Eminem, etc. Winkelmann goes by the pen name, Beeple.
In 2007, Beeple started a daily public art journal – consisting of everything from line drawings, sketches, photography and extremely detailed 3D renders. As of today, he’s published 5070 unique daily art pieces.
Vanity Fair notes Beeple was initially inspired by mixed media artist Tom Judd, who made one piece of art each day between 2004 – 2005 and dubbed it “Everyday.” Beeple took this idea and ran with it, not limiting himself to one year, but instead just using the idea as a tool for his artist growth – especially a way to practice photography and 3D animation. Beeple dubbed his daily artwork releases “Everydays” – a homage to Judd.
He kept it up, and 13.5 years later, Beeple’s hobby paid off… Big time.
On March 11, 2021, a digital creation titled, “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” – a depiction of Beeple’s literal first 5000 “Everydays” – was auctioned off through Christie’s for a historic $69,346,250.00
What makes Beeple’s sale so Historic?
- Christie’s is the first major auction house to offer an NFT (Non-fungible token)
- Christie’s is the first major auction house to accept cryptocurrency, in this case Ethereum
- It’s the third-most expensive artwork sold by a living artist.
Beeple’s NFT sale has captivated the world and piqued the interest of the entire art industry. Artists want to know how to create NFTs. Dealers want to know how to sell NFTs. Collectors want to know how to display NFTs. Right now the possibilities seem endless… but also bit daunting and confusing.
I created everydazehaze to deep dive into the world of NFTs and share my firsthand knowledge of what it takes to create, buy, sell and explain the NFT boom.
Inspiration for Today’s Art in 10 sentences or less:
Learning about NFTs is stressful. So, today I give you: A man smoking a joint. Everyone need to relax more, right?
Cheers,
Everydazehaze