How Beeple’s NFT Art is Changing Art History

We want to dedicate this article to the burgeoning world of NFT art by analyzing the tumultuous career of digital artist Mike Winkelman.

Mike Winkelmann lives in South Carolina, in the heart of the suburbs. He is also the father of two children and the husband of a school teacher. However, Winkelmann is not just a family man who lives a quintessential, white-picket-fence life.  In the vast art world of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), Mike Winkelmann is known as Beeple, a preeminent digital artist.

Even before the rise of the NFT art world, starting in 2007, Beeple launched the Everydays digital art series. The name of this project should be taken literally. Every day he creates different works of art. He is dedicated to his series and never misses his daily work. Even on the most important days of his life, such as his own wedding or the birth of two children, Beeple continued to support his digital art project.

This project is his method to develop, improve, and perfect his drawing skills. In the fall of 2020, Beeple noticed the growing popularity of NFT art in the digital art community. Beeple had 13 years of design and digital art experience at the time. So he saw a profitable opportunity to rethink his work.

With almost 2 million subscribers on Instagram and a background in digital creations, Beeple had the perfect launch pad into the NFT art world.

Beeple released his first drop of NFT art at the end of October 2020, on Nifty Gateway, an online NFT auction platform. Beeple set the price for each NFT artwork to $1. A few months later, NFT artworks from the first drop were re-sold for over $600,000.

In December 2020, Beeple organized his second NFT art drop. The winning bid for The Complete MF Collection was $777,777, and the overall auction earnings came to a total of approximately $3.5 million.

In early 2021, the rise of NFT art has disrupted the traditional art sector. For the first time, auction houses, galleries and art institutions have recognized the value of digital art.

Profitability in itself was quite an attractive factor. And it became clear that NFT art could no longer be ignored.

In March 2021, Christie’s hosted the first-ever auction featuring a fully digital NFT artwork. The starting price of Everydays: the First 5000 Days, by Beeple began at $100. The bidding war took place for nearly two weeks. By the end of the auction,one could say that  Beeple changed the course of history.

His NFT art has been sold for over $69 million. This cemented Beeple’s presence in the canon of art history, along with names like David Hockney and Jeff Koons, as one of the three most expensive living artists.