Background and career
Michael Joseph Winkelmann (born June 20, 1981), known professionally as Beeple, is an American digital artist, graphic designer, and animator known for selling NFTs. In his art, he uses various media to create comical, phantasmagoric works which make political and social commentary while using pop culture figures as references. Beeple was introduced to NFTs in October 2020 and credits Pak for providing his first "primer" on selling NFTs. The NFT associated with Everydays: the First 5000 Days, a collage of images from his "Everydays" series, was sold on March 12, 2021, for $69 million in cryptocurrency to an investor in NFTs. It is the first purely non-fungible token to be sold by Christie's. The auction house had previously sold Block 21, an NFT with accompanying physical painting for approximately $130,000 in October 2020.
Winkelmann was born on June 20, 1981. He grew up in North Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. His father worked as an electrical engineer and his mother worked at a senior center. He graduated from Purdue University in 2003 majoring in computer science.
Mike Winkelmann began "Everydays", which involved creating a piece of art every day, on May 1, 2007. The project is ongoing and spans more than 6,800 consecutive days of digital art creation. He has discussed completing a piece of art even on days when it was inconvenient, like on his wedding day and the dates of his children's births. The project was inspired by Tom Judd, who drew every day for a year. Winkelmann thought it was a beneficial way to sharpen his drawing skills. In subsequent years, he focused on one skill or medium per year, including Adobe Illustrator in 2012 and Cinema 4D in 2015. Winkelmann's works often depict dystopian futures. Frequently he uses recognizable figures from popular culture or politics to satirize current events. Some of Winkelmann's works were incorporated into Louis Vuitton's Spring/Summer 2019 ready-to-wear collection.
In 2019, Beeple’s Everydays was featured in Louis Vuitton’s Spring/Summer 2019 Ready-To-Wear collection. Nine Everydays were featured in the collection which was revealed during Paris Fashion Week at the Louvre. When asked by School of Motion how he thought the everyday was going to be displayed, Beeple said, “I actually thought they might not end up using them at all. So when my wife and I went to the show at the Louvre, which was just an insane experience, we half expected to not see my work at all. But then a model came out wearing one of my Everyday on her shirt... ‘Oh My God!’ It was crazy surreal. One model after the next came out wearing something I’d made.”
Between 2009 and 2019, Beeple created VJ Loops. The short abstract digital art pieces were released under Creative Commons and are free for any use. They have been downloaded millions of times for use at thousands of live events all over the world. The clips are intended as source material for creatives all over the world and number in the hundreds.
In February 2020, Winkelmann started selling non-fungible tokens, digital tokens associated with works of art whose ownership is verified by a blockchain. The first sale of a Beeple NFT titled "SUPER EXTRACTION" took place at ETH Denver in February 2020., and more were sold on Nifty Gateway in November 2020. One of these NFTs, Crossroad, would change into one of two animations depending on the victor of the 2020 United States presidential election; it was sold for $66,666.66 and resold for $6.7 million in February 2021. The NFT associated with Everydays: the First 5000 Days, a collage of images from the "Everydays" series, was put up for auction at Christie's on February 25 and sold for $69,400,000 on March 11, 2021. This was the first NFT to be sold by a legacy auction house, and is the first sale at Christie's that could be paid in Ether. In March 2021 Beeple called NFTs an "irrational exuberance bubble".
