In 2007, the artist known as Beeple started Everyday, a project comprised of a work of art completed each day and then posted online. Fifteen years and more than 5000 artworks later, the first 5000 works of art sold for millions at Christie’s auction as an NFT.
What makes it unique is that this collective work of art started when web1 was becoming web2, and now it exists as part of web3 too.
How Everyday Began
The artist, Mike Winklemann, otherwise known as Beeple, states that his purpose was to improve his art, and the choice to post daily kept his standards as high as possible. He started by doing drawings, and each year or round, his range grew. The fourteen rounds began with sketches, then went on to cinema 4D, then photography, and back to cinema 4D.
In 3D graphics, this graphic designer is considered one of the first in the field, but probably the most consistent, after having posted daily for nearly 15 years. When Everyday began, NFTs didn’t exist, but now it is such a well-known project that it was sold for 69.3 million dollars.
How Everyday Grew into an NFT
You may be wondering how daily drawings and pictures eventually became an NFT. Everyday: The First 5000 Days is a collage of these 5000 daily works of art. The images that became part of the NFT are those from the project’s conception, from May 1st, 2007, until January 7th, 2022.The collage got turned into a token, and that token was sold at the auction.
To make an NFT, you need to ‘mint’ one. Once minted, it exists as blockchain code that might link to an external server where the artwork is stored or the code contains the artwork. In the case of Everyday: The First 5000 Days, the 5000 works of art were not sold, but the digital print minted as an NFT is what was bought at Christie’s.
How Beeple Brought the NFT to the Mainstream
Though there have been some detractors, the sale is interesting because it used a traditional auction house and sold it in the same way other works of art would be sold. Usually, NFTs are sold on the blockchain, with transparency a priority. In this case, it was sold at a traditional auction house and purchased using cryptocurrency, but Christie disclosed the buyers only a day later.
People brought the NFT from the blockchain markets and sold it in the most mainstream art house. Christie’s made the news for having sold an NFT at such a price, and Beeple succeeded in becoming a web3 artist using traditional sales methods.
The NFT is sold, but Beeple continues to make art and impress the communities that celebrate fine and digital art. Everyday: The First 5000 Days is not Beeple’s only NFT, but it is the one sold at a record-breaking price using traditional methods of sale, namely, the world-famous Christie’s, which brought the NFT to the mainstream
