From Mike Winkelmann to Beetle
Mike Winkelmann, a graphic designer and animator born in 1981, now lives in South Charleston with his family and two children.Mike has a small reputation in his field of work. He has designed for Nike, Apple, Coca-Cola, LV and Space X and other companies. He has also performed concert stages for Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Childish Gambino, Eminem, Zedd, deadmau5 and "Spicy Chicken" Nicki Minaj. Visual effects. He has done visual effects for the MTV Music Video Awards (VMA) and Super Bowl halftime shows. Such work history and works can be regarded as "golden sparkles" in the field of graphic design.Of course, this is just Mike Winkelmann's identity in the real world. In the world of encrypted digital art, he also has a well-known hidden identity— Beeple, which sold his NFT works at Christie’s auction house on March 11, 2021 for $69,346,250 .
But the great god is not born as a god. At first, Mike Winkelmann was just a designer working in a website design company. While browsing the web, he saw a British artist who draws sketches on his social network every day, attracting many fans.
The reason why the genius in the eyes of people is extraordinary is not that it is superhuman, but that it has made continuous efforts. Ten thousand hours of training is a necessary condition for anyone to transform from an ordinary into a world-class master.——Malcolm Gladwell, "Alien: Success Stories"
Although it’s not clear whether Mike believes in this law, he really puts it into practice.He named himself "Beeple" on the Internet. Since May 1, 2007, he has insisted on completing a painting every day, day after day, without interruption, even on the day he was poisoned in the hospital and the day his child was born. .
This is the first painting he painted for this insistence on May 1, 2007. It was his uncle whose nickname is "Uber Jay". Now to find this painting, Mike is also a little embarrassed, "I probably would have spent more time on this, had I known it would eventually be part of a piece auctioned by Christie's!".
This one was painted by him getting up at five o'clock in the morning, when he was about to drive his pregnant wife to the hospital. Later, they had their first child. This painting is of great significance to him.
"This is a picture from when I had horrible food poisoning" , this painting he insisted on on the day of food poisoning does not look complicated, but because of his physical weakness, it took longer than many more complicated paintings. time.It can be seen from his works that the content, style and technique of Mike Winkelmann's works are gradually changing in the daily polishing of his works. He tries a new style every year, and teaches himself the use of AI, AE and C4D, from sketching, to vector illustration, to later 3D animation. His works range from the initial paper works to the later electronic image works, and the content is also from the beginning. His paintings are based on life materials, and in the later stage, they are closely related to the subject matter of the time.
This painting was completed within one hour after the Vice Presidential debate in the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign. During the debate, a fly accidentally landed on the head of former Vice President Mike Pence. Based on this event, Mike Winkelmann created the work on October 7, 2020.As a creator sensitive to current events, the novel coronavirus COVID-19 will certainly be Mike's creative inspiration. He has created a number of related works, which can reflect his own optimism that mankind will defeat the virus.
Louis Vuitton? Is he still alive?
One work per day, Mike Winkelmann persisted for 13 years, more than 5,000 days. Originally it was his personal behavior. Later, due to the improvement of his creative level and his distinctive personal style, he uploaded his works, which became known and sought after by more and more design enthusiasts and the public. His Instagram attracted 1.9 million followers. There are also nearly 300,000 followers.
In 2018, LV's art director contacted Mike Winkelmann and invited him to design for LV. LV hopes to print some of his works into the 2019 spring and summer series of clothing, and said that the series will be unveiled at the Louvre fashion show.Mike Winkelmann knew so little about fashion and luxury goods that his first thought when he got the news was: Is Louis Vuitton (this person) still alive?Although he submitted a design for the other party, in fact Mike Winkelmann did not believe that it was true that luxury brands came to work with him until he sat in the Louvre with Cate Blanchett and Ai Alicia Vikander (Alicia Vikander) sat together in the front row of the show and saw the model wearing his work.
LV said that Mike Winkelmann's work resonated strongly and continued to work with him afterwards, inviting him to design a digital window display for LV's global boutiques.Persevering in one painting a day, it gradually evolved into a kind of performance art. Mike Winkelmann made a huge collection of all his daily paintings and named it "EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS". The next thing is well known. One of the world's most famous art auction houses, CHRISTIE'S, obtained the right to auction this work, cast it into an NFT, and sold it for US$69,346,250.Christie said, " We are proud to announce that the world's largest fund company Metapurse founder MetaKovan NFT is Beeple" EVERYDAYS: ". 5000 FIRST DAYS buyers THE "33 buyers from 11 countries around the world participated in the bidding, 91% of which participated in the Christie’s auction for the first time, and 22 million visitors flocked to Christie’s official website (CHRISTIES.COM) to watch the auction. Beeple, Mike Winkelmann 's identity in the world of encrypted digital art, has become the third most expensive living artist in the world by virtue of this auction , second only to Jeff Koons ($91 million) and David Hockney (David Hockney, US$90 million).What is the concept of US$69 million in the traditional art market? A precious Van Gogh manuscript sold at Christie’s New York on March 1 this year was estimated to be no more than 7 million US dollars.This is the most imposing way for Beeple in the world of encrypted digital art to publicly stand in front of the public. It is also the first time that NFT has given a jaw-dropping answer to everyone in the face of a traditional art transaction, showing the world of encrypted digital art. Unlimited potential.
The first "close" contact with Beeple
With publicly available information, this is not the first time Mike Winkelmann has set foot in the encrypted digital field .A representative of the NFT platform Nifty Gateway sent him a message in September 2020 describing the popularity of his work and asking him if he would consider joining the platform. Initially, Mike thought this was just one of the news that the platform recruited all creators, and ignored it. But after he saw other artists join, he found that "this thing can really make a lot of money", and he started to do his homework.Due to the epidemic and not going out at home every day, Mike began to gradually understand the blockchain and encrypted digital currency . As a designer, after he came into contact with the non-fungible token NFT (Non Fungible Token), his professional sensitivity made him immediately interested in the development of this form of artistic existence, and provided him with the integration of his next creation. New path platform.In October 2020, he tried to auction three works on Nifty Gateway. Unexpectedly, the website server crashed because of the hot market. One of his digital animation works "Crossroad" sold for more than US$6 million.Mike Winkelmann and his wife designed a set of LCD screens with a titanium alloy backplane and sold them with NFT. The screen can cyclely display the works just purchased by the bidders, with a QR code. Scan the QR code to link the website to display the current and past owners of the art lot.For the second time, Mike auctioned three works numbered "Open Edition", each with a starting price of US$969 and a five-minute auction time limit. This time Nifty Gateway learned smarter, and they added nine servers to handle the expected traffic. As a result, after five minutes, artist Beeple sold three artworks worth $582,000 .Fairchild, he is a fan of Beeple, but he "don't know what NFT is, and I have never heard of Nifty Gateway". In December of last year, when he browsed Beeple's Instagram, he accidentally saw news about his works being auctioned. Although he was skeptical of NFT art, his obsession with Beeple's work sparked his interest and bought Beeple's "Infected Culture" for $969.He received a certificate of authenticity for the NFT and even a hair sample collected from Beeple. In an interview this month, Fairchild also said, " I never thought that buying a piece of art for US$969 would turn into an asset worth US$300,000 within three months. "Fairchild had previously predicted that he might be able to sell this artwork with 100% proceeds in the next few years.But within three months, the value of this NFT has appreciated by nearly 30,000%, and another different copy of "Infected Culture" was sold on February 26 this year for $288,000. So now, Fairchild adjusted his price target and he changed the price of Nifty Gateway to $1,698,888.
According to Nifty Gateway , the artist Beeple sold 21 works over a weekend , and the 12 bidders each bid more than $100,000 . In the hot online auctions, a mystery appeared: some buyers bid higher than others, and there is a peculiar connection between the online names of these buyers: each name has the same name as the small mountain in Rome. . It was later discovered that these pen names all belonged to a collector, MetaKovan, who spent a lot of money on his own, including 20 of the 21 works auctioned by Beeple that weekend.Coincidentally, it is the same as the name of the buyer who bought "EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS" for $69,346,250.
Art is for lovers, and the art market is for liars
There are many reds. The voice surrounding Mike Winkelmann/Beeple is not all praise.The first ones who can't sit still are the artists. In their eyes, "art is for lovers, and the art market is for crooks." Mike Winkelmann/Beeple's works are criticized in art critics and Tibetan clubs because of their huge output and homogenous artistic creation style.And Mike Winkelmann/Beeple's other attacking point is the destination of his lot.An independent writer named Amy Castor published a document two days ago, claiming that after her investigation, the real name of the buyer Metakovan was Vignesh Sundaresan, of Indian origin. Vignesh comes from Canada and is an out-and-out person in the currency circle. Not only did he issue a pass to "cut the leek", he was also suspected of running away from the trading platform he founded. And this year, Vignesh issued a pass again, this time the pass name he issued is B20.And Beeple itself holds 2% of the total B20. He is the only artist who directly obtained tokens at the beginning of the B20 release. 8% of the total B20 was used for private placement and 16% was used for public placement. It can be seen that the 2% directly obtained by Beeple is not small, and Vignesh is considered a high stakeholder.The addition of "marketing expert" Justin Sun made the hype even more obvious. He claimed to have participated in the auction of "EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS" at Christie's and was the second highest bid buyer. According to him, his bid was defeated by others exceeding $250,000 at the last second.This other person, of course, is MetaKovan who has appeared many times.Amy Castor believes that it is a conspiracy of Beeple and buyer Vignesh to sell his works at sky-high prices. Through this auction, Beeple's value can skyrocket and become one of the most valuable living artists. And Vignesh's B20 can rise sharply. According to CoinMarketCap, after the Christie’s auction, the public offering price of B20 at US$0.36 once rose to US$25, and now it has fallen to about US$15. Vignesh holds 5.9 million B20, which is still worth much more than the price he paid for the work. . What's more, if he and the artist collude, he may not need to pay the full price.Amy Castor is still updating the content in real time, claiming that Vignesh contacted her and asked her to delete the manuscript.Things are getting more and more confusing. So, did Justin Sun participate in the planning of these two people? Or is it just like rubbing Jack Ma and Buffett, going to the Christie's auction to get a lot of heat?Before the deadline, Beeple's latest action was to photograph a song NFT by Elon Musk for a price of US$69 million
Written at the end
It is undeniable that Mike Winkelmann/Beeple's sky-high NFT auction has officially "out of the circle" of encrypted digital art. In the traditional art market, artists usually only get a share when their works are sold for the first time. After that, the profits generated by each resale of their works all belong to the seller. In the field of encrypted digital art, artists can hold “shares” of works through smart contracts , and part of the premium generated by each future exchange can be allocated to artists in proportion.However, we should not interpret this "out of the circle" merely as the distribution of benefits. It is a challenge to the discourse power system of the traditional art market.Are Beeple's works real or not at auction? Is encrypted digital art at the time when it broke ground? Or will the capital join forces to "cut the leek"? The answer is important, but not important. The only difference is whether we focus on the NFT works auctioned by Beeple or the future of the entire encrypted digital art.Whether it is Mike Winkelmann or Beeple, it is a drop in the ocean in the long river of times, flashing by the wave. And this long river that leads to the ocean is where we want to reach. Similarly, how much impact will the future of encrypted digital art have due to this sky-high price auction? let us wait and see.