collecting the artist: Beeple

As perhaps the most well-known digital artist of our time, Beeple is the everyman artist walking the master’s path.

He puts one foot in front of the other, creating and publishing a new piece of art every single day, which he’s done for the last 17 years. With each piece, he gets better at what he does. He’s the embodiment of creating and iterating. He embraces failure and looking bad, even making light of putting out bad work with his web domain “beeple-crap.com”.

Some curators and collectors consider him to be the Andy Warhol of our time. An outsider to the art world turned pop culture commentator, Beeple uses his art to point out the absurdity of politics, celebrities, big tech monopolies, crypto, and, of course, the very art world that struggles at times to accept his art.

Beeple is best known for “Everydays”, his practice of creating and publishing art every single day without exception. It’s a testament to his commitment to improving his artistic practice and his longevity as an artist. Both the high volume and low stakes nature of his “Everydays” gives him the freedom to poke fun of anything without the pressure for each piece to be a definitive artist statement.

The practice has garnered him millions of followers on Instagram and led to his record breaking $69.3m sale at Christies for “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” in 2021.

In this editorial, we dive into one of the most influential artists of our time. We explore his path to becoming Beeple, highlight what we appreciate about the artist and his art, and detail how we've collected his works at Curated.

Mike Winklemann, aka Beeple, is an American digital artist. He works with digital art tools such as Cinema 4D and photoshop to create often humorous, grotesque, and shocking works of digital art. His works frequently touch on pop culture topics including famous celebrities, technology companies, American politics, and, more recently, the cryptocurrency subculture.

As a child, he enjoyed pushing boundaries in his art. In a 2019 interview with NVIDIA, Beeple recounts using real blood in a drawing of a werewolf in the 2nd grade and getting in trouble for it. Like many of his contemporaries, he received his first computer at an early age and was taught how to program. The childhood exposure to technology would set the course for his early career and a lifelong love of creating with computers.

Winklemann studied Computer Science at Purdue University and worked as a web developer for 11 years. The stability of his day job meant he could find separation between what he considered work and his art practice.

In his art practice, he would create daily works of art, starting with freehand drawings and eventually moving into Cinema 4D and other digital tools. He worked on projects and freelance opportunities that allowed him to explore whatever he enjoyed.

One such project was VJ Loops, a collection of seamless video clips featuring futuristic and fantastical imagery, which would be used by video jockeys during live concert performances. He released the project in 2010 under creative commons, meaning that anyone could use them for free, with no restrictions on any kind of commercial use. Beeple would message VJs telling them about it and the almost too-good-to-believe offer — high quality concert visuals for free.

Within a year, Beeple’s VJ Loops were showing up in concerts and became very popular in the industry. The popularity of VJ Loops resulted in many inbound opportunities to create custom concert visuals for top artists. He would go on to produce concert visuals for Ariana Grande, Eminem, Justin Bieber, deadmau5 and many more. It was a formative experience for Beeple, realizing the power of releasing high-quality artwork for free and ultimately benefiting from the virality and distribution of it.

By the time the NFT digital art boom started in 2020, Beeple was already a well-known figure in digital art. His zero exceptions daily practice of creating art had garnered him over 2M followers on Instagram. He was also doing commercial work for brands such as Louis Vuitton, Nike, Coca-Cola, and Apple, and his visuals had made two appearances at the Super Bowl including the 2020 Halftime Show.

Digital artists that were early to digital art on the blockchain, including XCOPY and Pak, were all trying to onboard Beeple into the world of NFTs.

On October 30th, 2020, Beeple released his first NFT collection called “The First Drop” on Nifty Gateway. It was a test to see how he’d be received. The collection included two 1/1s along with “Politics Is Bullshit”, an edition of 100 priced at $1 each. The collection sold out instantly, with his two 1/1s achieving $66k each.

Beeple’s popularity within NFTs grew quickly, with near fanatical public sales that would crash servers of digital art platforms. A $1 edition of “Politics Is Bullshit” sold for over $600k within six months of the original sale.

In March 2021, Christie’s auction house brought “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” to auction in the First Open show. There was some expectation it could do well, but no one expected the piece to ultimately achieve a $69m hammer price. The sale would make Beeple the third most expensive living artist in the world.

He would follow that with the auction of “Human One”, a kinetic video sculpture that blends physical and digital art in a dynamic, ever-evolving installation. The piece achieved $29m at auction and to date has been exhibited at Castello di Divoli in Italy, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, and M+ in Hong Kong.

Beyond the external exhibitions and museum placements, Beeple is unique in building Beeple Studios, a 50,000-square-foot digital art space in Charleston, South Carolina. It's half digital playground, half museum grade exhibition hall so the artist can show his art the way it was meant to be experienced. In addition to being an incredible gallery for Beeple’s art, Beeple Studios has hosted many digital art events, including a CryptoPunks community meetup and a digital art “deathmatch”.

In our collecting of Beeple's artwork, we've grown a deep appreciation for the artist, his artistic practice, and what makes his work stand out.

Beeple is the everyman artist. He resonates with his audience not only because of his relatable art, but because he puts in the work day in and day out. His practice connects to the part within all of us that says “I can be an artist too. I just need to put in the work”.

Flipping through the archive of “Everydays” from the beginning is inspiring precisely because they’re initially not very good. His self awareness is often reflected in the work.

Each day gets a little bit better. Across months, the improvement is noticeable.

Over the course of thousands of days, the everyman artist gets closer to becoming a master. He’s achieved mastery of complex software and navigates them with ease. He continues to expand his use of technology, experimenting with hardware boxes and artificial intelligence. We are witness to Beeple halfway along the master’s path, and he has no intention of stopping, not even for a day.

Today, Beeple is one of the most widely known digital artists in the world and is recognized at the highest levels in the art world, including renowned curators Hans Ulrich Obrist and Carolyn Christov Bakargiev, the latter of whom has become a mentor to the artist.

Even with his ascendence, nothing takes him away from his commitment to his art, which has been ongoing for 6,251 days and counting. It is a testament to his dedication and a crucial factor in his artistic evolution.

His consistency marks him as an enduring figure within digital art, one that is constantly adapting and growing as digital tools evolve. All of that stands in sharp relief against the short-term and often hype-driven nature of crypto.

Beeple’s commitment to producing a new piece of art daily over decades is itself a performance of how humans need to adapt to a world of rapidly evolving technologies. “Everydays” serves as a chronological account of both the artist’s growth and how digital tools have expanded over the years.

As a digital artist in the era of social media, Beeple has grown his audience through platforms such as Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter. The real-time feedback from his followers has uniquely influenced his art, which over time may have contributed to his shift from abstract works to pop culture themes.

The speed at which Beeple produces art reflects the accelerated pace of contemporary life influenced by digital technology. In a world of rapid social media cycles, Beeple’s art captures these changes almost in real time. His art provides a comical visual commentary on the latest in politics, technology, and culture.

He creates work that makes fun of the very systems that he’s thrived in: America, tech platforms, crypto, and art. He picks recurring topics that get engagement on social media, including celebrities, tech billionaires, and crude humor.

Beeple’s daily postings on social media engages audiences in a manner that is instantaneous and interactive, mirroring the nature of digital technology. In doing so, it transforms his art from a static experience to a communal event. Each new piece is posted to Instagram daily, inviting immediate engagement and leverages the connective power of the internet to amplify the reach and impact of his art.

One unique outcome resulting from his daily postings is the impact of his art on money. In a world of hyperfinancialization powered by cryptocurrencies, Beeple’s art represents a reversal of the traditional dynamic of money influencing art. Whenever Beeple releases artwork related to a specific cryptocurrency, it can lead to price speculation and movement, which illustrates art's direct impact on financial value. This phenomenon, where an artist's work can sway financial markets, marks a significant shift in the traditional relationship between art and money.

An often under-appreciated aspect of Beeple’s art is the role that he’s played in elevating powerful new digital art tools to the status of legitimate artistic mediums. Many of these tools have only existed for the past decade or so and have primarily been used in commercial applications such as film, television, and video game production.

Beeple creates art using complex software that takes years or decades to achieve mastery in, especially as the software itself is constantly evolving. Watching Beeple create with these tools is akin to watching a master painter with a brush. He can create entire worlds in minutes, seamlessly navigating countless features, textures, 3D models, and degrees of freedom to achieve his precise vision.

Digital art tools such as Cinema 4D are akin to painting and world building using complex 3D tools. They reveal the dual impact of technology on art: as new technology expands what’s possible to create, more is demanded from the artist in order to innovate and push boundaries. Beeple’s mastery of these tools showcases the advanced technical skill that allows him to challenge the traditional boundaries of digital art to offer up something entirely new that could only be created digitally.

For collectors, Beeple’s art comes in three main categories: Editions (which are 1 of N), 1/1s, and special auction pieces such as “Human One” and “Everydays: The First 5000 Days”. Beeple is unique in not having to do public sales of his works, with the last public sale being in April of 2021. Collecting Beeple requires either buying mainly edition pieces on secondary markets or becoming part of a small group of his primary collectors. Beeple carefully curates his 1/1 collectors by only minting to those who are long-term oriented. This group of high conviction collectors is given a limited number of mints, resulting in a small number of “Everydays” minted per year. Each one is carefully held and rarely appears on the secondary market.

Our curation of his work is a mix of iconic editions and unique 1/1s minted to Curated directly from the artist. Each piece resonates with our ideals and beliefs in the digital art movement. Our bar for curation is to aim for works that will stand the test of time, which are as relevant today as we expect them to be in the coming decades.

Our collection includes significant early editions, including two "Politics is Bullshit" from his first drop as well as "GigaChad" from his 2021 SPRING/SUMMER COLLECTION. These are iconic pieces and represent some of his earliest minted works. While we don't normally collect editions in general, there are some, like both of these, that are iconic and necessary to build out a meaningful collection.

On the 1/1 side, we've currently selected two works that speak to our values at Curated.

The first, titled "Future Graffiti", is a glimpse of a distant future where the significant collections of our current era have been celebrated, forgotten, and then later rediscovered. This piece is iconic Beeple, with the inclusion of his nostalgic Pikachu alongside PFP easter eggs — including CryptoPunk #4594 from our collection, which we unknowingly acquired on the same day this piece was made.

The second 1/1, titled “The Next Fifteen Years”, is the first Everyday after Beeple completed 15 years of work. This piece is symbolic of both the promise of digital art and the mountain of work that lies ahead. It also resonates with our belief that we’re still early in this long journey.

As collectors with a long-term focus, we’re honored to continue collecting Beeple’s 1/1 works over the years to come.

Seventeen years into “Everydays”, Beeple is squarely in the middle of his art career. Even as one of the most successful artists alive, he’s still innovating and investing in the future. He’s experimenting with AI art, developing Beeple Studios as a world class center for art, and is still honing his skills one “Everyday” at a time. Beeple, who thrived even before finding breakthrough commercial success through NFTs, will continue doing what he does best — creating art on a daily basis over the decades to come.

Thank you to Ryan Zurrer, Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile, Nat Emodi, Cozomo de’ Medici, Scott Winklemann, and Beeple for reading drafts and shaping our thinking on this piece.