''Everydays: the First 5000 Days'' is a digital work of art created by

Mike Winkelmann Michael Joseph Winkelmann (born 20 June 1981), known professionally as Beeple, is an American digital artist, graphic designer, and animator known for selling NFTs. In his art, he uses various mediums to create comical, phantasmagoric works that ...

, known professionally as Beeple. The work is a collage of 5000 digital images created by Winkelmann for his ''Everydays'' series. Its associated

non-fungible token A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify authenticity and ownership. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the b ...

(NFT) was sold for $69.3 million at

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...

in 2021, making it first on the

List of most expensive non-fungible tokens This is a list of the highest known prices possibly paid for non-fungible token A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used ...

. ''Everydays'' was purchased by Singapore-based programmer Vignesh Sundaresan, a cryptocurrency investor and the founder of the Metapurse NFT project, also known online by his pseudonym MetaKovan. Sundaresan paid for the artwork using 42,329

Ether In organic chemistry, ethers are a class of compounds that contain an ether group—an oxygen atom connected to two alkyl or aryl groups. They have the general formula , where R and R′ represent the alkyl or aryl groups. Ethers can again be c ...

. Both the buyer Sundaresan and the seller Winkelmann had a vested interest in driving up the price of the work, in order to bring attention to and drive sales for a speculative asset related to twenty other Beeple works, which they called "B20 tokens." The price of these tokens, in which Sundaresan held a majority stake, reached its peak during media coverage of the Everydays auction, and subsequently collapsed. Because of this, some observers have described the auction as a publicity stunt and a scam. Sundaresan receives rights to display the artwork, but does not receive copyright. He has displayed the artwork in a digital museum within "the

metaverse In science fiction, the "metaverse" is a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal, and immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets. In colloquial usage, ...

", which the public can view through a web browser.

Composition

Winkelmann was inspired by British artist Tom Judd and began the daily project on 1 May 2007. Some of the images involve figures from pop culture, including

Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ''né'' Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former preside ...

and

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...

, and are arranged chronologically. Some of the earlier images are hand drawn and not computer produced. In an article published to

Artnet Artnet.com is an art market website. It is operated by Artnet Worldwide Corporation, which has headquarters in New York City, in the United States, and is owned by Artnet AG, a German publicly traded company based in Berlin that is listed on t ...

, art critic Ben Davis asserted that some of the 5,000 images comprising the work revealed various racial, misogynistic, and homophobic stereotypes.

Will Gompertz William Edward Gompertz (born 25 August 1965) was the BBC's arts editor before moving to a position as the Barbican Centre’s Artistic Director from 1 June 2021. Gompertz attended Dulwich Preparatory School, in Cranbrook, Kent. Gompertz was p ...

considered Winkelmann a "talented exponent" of the comic book aesthetic, and compared his work to

Hieronymus Bosch Hieronymus Bosch (, ; born Jheronimus van Aken ; – 9 August 1516) was a Dutch/Netherlandish painter from Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school. His work, generally oil on oa ...

and

Philip Guston Philip Guston (born Phillip Goldstein, June 27, 1913 – June 7, 1980), was a Canadian American painter, printmaker, muralist and draftsman. Early in his five decade career, muralist David Siquieros described him as one of "the most promising ...

. He predicted that the work would be regarded as "either as the moment before the short-lived cryptoart bubble burst, or as the first chapter in a new story of art".

References

{{reflist, 33em Digital art 2021 works 2021 in the arts Blockchain art