Mike Winkelmann

Winkelmann started "Everydays", which involved creating a piece of art every day, on May 1, 2007. This project is ongoing and has spanned more than 5,000 consecutive days of digital art creation. Winkelmann has discussed completing a piece of art even on days when it was inconvenient, like on his wedding day and the day of his children's births.[10] The project was inspired by Tom Judd, who did a drawing every day for a year. Winkelmann thought it was a beneficial way to sharpen his drawing skills.[11] In the following years, he focused on one skill or medium per year, including Adobe Illustrator in 2012 and Cinema 4D in 2015.[12] Winkelmann's works often depict dystopian futures.[13] Frequently, he uses recognizable figures from popular culture or politics to satirize current events.[13][14] Some of Winkelmann's works were incorporated into Louis Vuitton's Spring/Summer 2019 ready-to-wear collection.[9]

In February 2021, Winkelmann started selling non-fungible tokens, digital tokens associated with works of art whose ownership is verified by a blockchain.[15][16] The first two Beeple NFTs were sold at an auction at ETHDenver,[16][17][18] and more were sold on Nifty Gateway in November 2020.[19] 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.[20][21] 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.[14][22] In March 2021 Beeple called NFTs an "irrational exuberance bubble".[23]

On 9 November 2021, one of Beeple's artworks (HUMAN ONE) was sold at Christie's for $28,958,000 to collector Ryan Zurrer. The artwork is a 7-foot-high sculpture; a generative work of art, a dynamically changing hybrid sculpture, both physically and digitally. Beeple described this artwork as "the first portrait of a human born in the metaverse."[24] This is the first major work made by the artist that has both a sculptural and NFT component. After the sale, HUMAN ONE was exhibited at the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art in April 2022. This was the artist's debut museum exhibition.[25] Subsequently, the work was shown at the M+ Museum, marking the work's Asian premiere and the artist's first solo show in Asia.[26] On March 13, 2023, Beeple Studios opened in Charleston, South Carolina. A 50,000-square-foot building, it houses the artist's studio and features a 13,000-square-foot gallery and 13,000-square-foot experiential space.[27]

Beeple, "Human One"