Beeple: Everydays, the First 5000 Days

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Winkelmann grew up in North Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, a town of 5,000 people about an hour outside of Milwaukee. His dad was an electrical engineer; his mother worked at a local senior center. Winkelmann graduated from Purdue in 2003 with a computer-science degree but no artistic training. (He chose the name Beeple after a 1980s toy whose nose lit up in response to light and sound, which was loosely connected to the kind of early art he was making.) Sex was released around the peak of the Aids epidemic in the US, Himes notes, and the book featured frank depictions of homosexuality at a time when gay relationships were less accepted in the mainstream. The stunning visuals have attracted a diverse audience online. In 2018, Winkelmann received a direct message from Florent Buonomano, an artistic director at Louis Vuitton, who’d shared the work with his boss, artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière (“the design leader of his generation,” according to Vogue). Winkelmann knew so little about fashion that his first thought was: Is Louis Vuitton still alive? He was surprised to find out that while Vuitton had passed away in 1892, he was corresponding with the artistic director of an iconic luxury house with 160 years of rich history. Aesthetic judgment is in the eye of the beholder,” Davis said. “We want there to be a dialogue and we want people to see this as worthy of criticism. That means it’s art. If you have a strong opinion about it, it has value. We’re all about giving visibility to this artist who clearly has something provocative to say and is also having a financially meaningful impact.” Beeple's masterwork: the first purely digital artwork offered at Christie's". Christie's . Retrieved May 16, 2021.

Winkelmann is based in North Charleston, South Carolina, having moved from Wisconsin in 2017. He is married and has two children.

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a b Thaddeus-Johns, Josie (February 24, 2021). "Beeple Brings Crypto to Christie's". The New York Times . Retrieved March 3, 2021.

Forget about paper documents and useless telephone calls, you can find all the information you need on your personal self-service portal.Virtual museum to be built to house Beeple's record-breaking digital work". The Art Newspaper - International art news and events. 13 March 2021 . Retrieved 2 November 2021. Winkelmann eventually focused on freelance projects for companies like Possible Productions in Los Angeles, which does graphics and animation for live events, including the MTV VMAs and the Super Bowl. (When Shakira walked through digital fire at the Super Bowl, that was Beeple.) He has also, in his words, done “lame” work for Apple but also something for Elon Musk’s SpaceX that was so “friggin’ sweet,” he’d tell you about it if he weren’t subject to a nondisclosure agreement. But he kept up the “Everydays”—for thirteen years now and counting—and he hasn’t missed a single day. Not for his wedding or the birth of his two children or a cross-country move from Appleton, Wisconsin, to Charleston.

For Christie’s, Beeple composed a mosaic made from his first 5,000 “Everydays”—but no LCD screen will accompany the sale. Unlike the first NFT that Christie’s sold in October—the Robert Alice canvas that happened to come with an NFT—this would be Christie’s first strictly digital piece. In short, an auction house founded in London in 1766 was about to sell a JPEG. a b "NFTs in IRL: the rise of digital art galleries in physical spaces". The Art Newspaper. April 23, 2021. One of the most memorable photographs from SEX shows Madonna walking nude along a Miami street. Courtesy Christie's

Winkelmann’s drawings certainly set him apart—inspired by the British illustrator Tom Judd, he has been creating one sketch a day since 1 May 2007. The work being sold by Christie’s, Everydays: The First 5000 Days, is comprised of 5,000 of these images. Mattei, Shanti Escalante-De (October 4, 2021). "NFT Platform Nifty Gateway, Collector Caught in Legal Battle Over Beeple Auction". ARTnews.com . Retrieved November 2, 2021. He adds: “I’m excited to dive more into that world and maybe shake things up a tiny bit.” Quality control

See, Beeple is Mike Winkelmann. Mike Winkelmann is Beeple. And in the weird worlds of high fashion, fine art, and cryptocurrency, it doesn’t get any weirder than this story. The home is big and airy with a view of a palmetto tree, which makes his setup even more unlikely. Cables run from his computer monitor to the bathroom next door through a crude hole in the wall. Doing the work it takes to render 3D animation, his computers give off so much heat that he’s had to put them on a wood platform over the bathtub, and he jury-rigged an industrial AC unit over the sink that vents into the attic. There is no art hanging on the walls. Behind him you can see side-by-side sixty-five-inch flat-screen televisions—one tuned to CNN, the other to Fox News. “I never change the channel and they’re always on mute,” he says. The TVs, he says, are a “window to the outside world.” His neighbors have no idea what he does, he says, which is probably good. Late last year, the revolutionary company Boston Dynamics posted a video of robots that could dance. It went viral, and Winkelmann put his spin on the moment, dropping the robots into a virtual strip club where patrons threw dollar bills at them. Despite the attention and his growing reach, Winkelmann never considered selling any of his work. Or rather, he didn’t really know how to sell it. This is a common problem. As John Crain, the cofounder of the NFT marketplace SuperRare, explained: “A lot of supertalented digital artists don’t fit the model for the contemporary art world. They don’t go to Art Basel. They’re active on GIF communities. They weren’t monetizing the work as fine art. They might have sold T-shirts on a Linktree.”

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Winkelmann started "Everydays," which involved creating a piece of art every day, on May 1, 2007. Since then, he has not missed a day; Winkelmann has discussed keeping it up even on his wedding day and the day of his children's births. Small, Zachary (March 4, 2022). "This Time, Beeple Is Trying His Hand at Artwork for Walls". The New York Times . Retrieved May 13, 2022. The digital artist known for NFTs is showing paintings and prints IRL at a Manhattan gallery. Mike Winkelmann is a graphic designer from Charleston, SC, USA who does a variety of digital artwork including short films, Creative Commons VJ loops, everydays, and VR / AR work.