Digital only artwork sold for $6.6 million at Christie’s, artist says 'It's so crazy'

Digital artwork in the form of NFT has been sold for nearly $70 million in British Auction House Christie’s first-ever sale of an artwork that does not even exist physically. The artwork named ‘Everydays -The First 5000 Days’ is a digital work by American artist Mike Winkelmann, popularly known as Beeple. The multi-colour artwork which was sold for $69,346,250 is a collage of 5,000 discreet images, created over a time span of over 13 years. 

“In EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS, the artist has stitched together recurring themes and colour schemes into an aesthetic whole. The individual pieces are organised in loose chronological order: zooming in reveals pictures by turn abstract, fantastical, grotesque or absurd, deeply personal or representative of current events. Recurring themes include society’s obsession with and fear of technology; the desire for and resentment of wealth; and America’s recent political turbulence,” Christie's wrote about the artwork.

In a subsequent tweet, Christie’s said that with the sale of this artwork, Beeple has now positioned himself amongst the “top three most valuable living artists”. Talking about the same in an online statement, Beeple stressed that with the advent of NFTs, the sale and purchase of artwork has revolutionized. “Artists have been using hardware and software to create artwork and distribute it on the internet for the last 20+ years but there was never a real way to truly own and collect it. With NFT’s that has now changed. I believe we are witnessing the beginning of the next chapter in art history, digital art.”

The sale also marked the debut of cryptocurrency as a mode of payment for purchasing artwork. As per the auction house, its buyer has chosen to remain anonymous. 

Image: Christie's Auction House

What is NFT? 

NFT is a cryptographic token that acts as a non-duplicable digital certificate of ownership for any digital asset. Any item online could be secured by an NFT. For this purpose, the item has to be put in place using an open-source code. Once the code is put in place, it is minted or published permanently using a token.  The NFT artwork movement has been steadily growing and has seen buyers, who are connected to artists via online marketplaces such as Nifty Gateway, Larva Labs and Open Sea, snatching up digital artworks at increasingly high prices.

Main Image: Christie's Auction House