Beeple: Then and Now

Mike Winkelman, also known as Beeple, has been creating a new piece of art every day for over 13 years now. He's been making art since before Netflix had a streaming service, before Toy story had a third installment, and before Bitcoin even existed. With his massive $69 million sale at Christie's, he's now the third most expensive living artist in the world. Beeple's life is an incredible story of grit and determination, so stick with me while I take you through it. I'm John Coogan and this is the saga of Mike Winkelmann, AKA Beeple. Beeple grew up in a small Wisconsin town that's home to just over 5,000 people. He didn't initially plan to be an artist though, so he went to Purdue University and studied computer science. After graduating, he spent some time designing websites for small companies, but would immerse himself in creative projects during his off hours. In 2007, he started Everydays with the goal of creating a new piece of art every single day. On May 1, 2007, he published his first work, a simple drawing of a man with a mustache titled Uber J. Repetition is a great way to build a new skill slowly over time. Instead of trying to binge learn everything there is to know about something new and potentially burning out, doing a little bit every day can add up slowly and help build mastery. While Beeple is certainly responsible for popularizing the idea of Everydays, he actually got the idea from another artist named Tom Judd, who had done a new drawing every day for a full year. In the early years of the project, Beeple bounced around between mediums. He started with just a pen and paper, moved on to Cinema 4D and 3D rendering for a while, and then spent a year on photography before moving back into the 3D world. Learning the ins and outs of a physical camera is incredibly valuable when you're working in 3D programs like Cinema 4D. This is because each 3D scene is rendered using a simulated camera and all the real world settings like focal length, aperture and shutter speed translate essentially one to one into the 3D world. But Beeple is really known for his Cinema 4D work where he pioneered a cyberpunky sci fi look that has influenced tons of other designers who use the software. In the late 2010s, beeple became so popular in the cinema 4D community that there was significant pushback against the everyday trend that had grown out of his initial project. Essentially, up and coming motion designers felt like they had to post new artwork every single day in order to be taken seriously and get work. Even though the everyday process was incredibly rewarding for Beeple, it simply wouldn't work for everyone. Just listen to how he describes his process to Nick Campbell from Grayscale Gorilla.

Something I learned is that you actually do these every day. Now I probably like a lot of you are like, well he probably batches a few of them, does like four on a Monday, and then posts them through the week. You actually do it every day. Why is that an important part of the process?

Well, it's every day so it kinda.

I would cheat so fast though.

Yeah, but that's the thing. I mean the whole point of it is to get better incrementally and not try and like I'm gonna fucking cram all night and stay up and like it's about the like just kind of spacing out the work and being able to see that progress.

That kind of obsessive work ethic clearly paid off here, but it's certainly not the only way to create something amazing after all. Margaret Mitchell spent 10 years writing Gone with the Wind, which won a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into an Academy Award winning film. Similarly, JRR Tolkien spent over a decade writing the Lord of the Rings, mostly due to the fact that he still had a full time academic position while he was writing the books. So great things can clearly be accomplished regardless of whether you choose to publish incrementally like Beeple, or spe decade honing a masterpiece before releasing it like Tolkien. But publishing iteratively does have one distinct advantage, publicity. Beeple's everyday project gained steam very slowly at first, but it started paying off long before any of the work was sold at auction. In 2010, he was able to collaborate with Flying Lotus, and in the spirit of community collaboration, Beeple Open sourced the Cinema 4D files and allowed other 3D animators to learn from his work and use the 3D models in new works. Beeple's Flying Lotus project was very well received and led to more client work with artists like Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Childish Gambino, and Nicki Minaj. As Beeple's following grew and his visual style became more distinct, he eventually got offers to work on even bigger projects. In 2018, Louis Vuitton reached out to use some of his everydays in their next Ready to Wear collection. The Images appeared on 13 of 45 pieces in the collection and helped Beeple reach a new echelon of legitimacy. But within the design community, a controversy was stirring about whether or not people had been compensated fairly for his work. Chris Do. The CEO and founder of the Future interviewed people and dug into the Louis Vuitton deal.

Let's take it back to Louis Vuitton.

Okay.

You were a little bit drunk. There was some alcohol involved.

How dare you.

It was your party. So I understand you were talking to me. He's like, hey, man, did you hear about the LV project? I'm like, what LV project? You're like, man, they bought these images for me.

And.

And what do you think? I would. What do you think is a fair price to charge? And then you showed me how much work you had done for this thing, and I'm like, oh, it should be this amount. And you're like, oh, my God. No, it was this amount.

That's where I disagree with you. Of course they have more money that they could have paid me. But in my view. And that's where I think sometimes designers have a tendency to overestimate their importance to a project. In this case, with Louis Vuitton, they didn't need me. They absolutely did not fucking need me. They might have wanted me. That's very different. There's a difference for how much you'll pay for something you want and something you need.

This exchange is fascinating to me because it reveals that even though Beeple has been honing his craft for over a decade, he still has imposter syndrome and doesn't understand the true value of his art. And that's why NFT auctions are such an interesting solution to this problem. NFT stands for Non Fungible Token, essentially a digital signature backed by blockchain technology that proves ownership of something. Unlike Bitcoin, which are all identical by design, NFTs are unique to some degree. What NFTs offer for sale is the idea of scarcity. And that's perfect for Beeple. Since he releases all of his artwork for free on Instagram and any image can be downloaded and copied endlessly, there hasn't been a good way for him to treat his work as fine art and sell it as other artists would. The last six months have been incredible for Beeple. In November of 2020, he sold an NFT of his video Crossroads for $66,666. And his reaction was pretty priceless.

I was like, oh, my God, I sold piece for 66,000. It was just like, insane.

In December of 2020, Beeple sold $3.5 million worth of art in one day, which was quickly followed by Crossroads reselling on the NFT secondary market for $6.6 million, of which Beeple got 10%. Then in March, Christie's, a centuries old auction house, sold a 5,000 image montage by Beeple for nearly $70 million. That makes Beeple the third most expensive living artist in the world. But not everyone in the art community is happy about Beeple's rise and newfound legitimacy. The New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz called Beeple's work just really, really derivative sci fi and Conan and Star wars crapola. As far as imagery and imagination go, whatever the medium, they're just bad kitsch. Even though I love Beeple, I can see where Salt is coming from here. Beeple focuses on popular topics and has never identified as the type of high minded artist that might be embraced by the mainstream art world. And no one has been more disparaging of Beeple's work than Beeple himself. Just listen to how he describes himself in this interview.

Well, it says on your website that you suck ass at what you do. I don't know when you wrote that, but you've been doing work many years ago.

It holds, but it was many years ago.

Yeah.

Do you still think you suck ass?

I think there's a lot of areas that I need to work on. There's just a lot of things that I really know nothing about and just squeak my way through, just hacking crap together.

But at the end of the day, what's incredible about Beeple is his dedication. He's been making a new piece of art every day for 13 years straight. And ultimately that's what I think these art collectors are buying. There's a reason why the collage of his first 5,000 pieces sold for so much more than any one artwork. It represents the progress and focus that Beeple has brought to his work for years and years. In some ways, Everyday's the first 5,000 days is more performance art than digital art. Anyone could compile 5,000 images into a collage, but only Beeple could create this specific collage and what it represents. Beeple's work is the ultimate refutation of the My kid could make that argument that people often levy when art sells for exorbitant prices. Sure, your kid probably could learn Cinema 4D and start pumping out renders, but by the time they had 5000 everydays published, they probably wouldn't even be a kid anymore, and that's got to be worth something.