Strong demand from collectors demonstrated confidence in the market on par with pre-pandemic levels at Christie’s 21st Century evening sale in New York. The auction was led by the monumental canvas by Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Guilt of Gold Teeth, 1982, which made $40,000,000 in a sale that brought in $219,278,750. The 100% sold auction attracted bidders from 27 countries, with 58% of lots selling above the high estimate.
BEEPLE (B. 1981) – HUMAN ONE Executed in 2021 and minted on 28 October 2021. This work is unique and is accompanied by a non fungible token. Christie’s Images Ltd., 2021
HUMAN ONE, the first hybrid physical and digital artwork by record-shattering NFT artist Beeple achieved $28,985,000. It sold online to a bidder based in Switzerland, underscoring the power of NFTs to break into masterpiece pricing. Another notable result was Peter Doig’s Swamped which made $39,862,500 and set a new auction record for the artist. The 20/21 Marquee Week of sales in New York continues on Thursday with The Cox Collection and the 20th Century Art evening sale with the Post War and Contemporary Art day sale on Friday.
Until October, the most Mike Winkelmann — the digital artist known as Beeple — had ever sold a print for was $100. Now he is among the top three most valuable living artists. Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days, a collage of all the images that Beeple has been posting online each day since 2007, achieved $69,346,250 at Christie’s, New York today.
The record-smashing NFT sale comes after months of increasingly valuable auctions. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique files that live on a blockchain and are able to verify ownership of a work of digital art. Buyers typically get limited rights to display the digital artwork they represent. In October, Winkelmann sold his first series of NFTs, with a pair going for $66,666.66 each. In December, he sold a series of works for $3.5 million total. And last month, one of the NFTs that originally sold for $66,666.66 was resold for $6.6 million.
Beeple (b. 1981), EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS 21,069 x 21,069 pixels (319,168,313 bytes) Minted on 16 February 2021. This work is unique.
The sale of the first purely digital NFT based work of art by a major auction house achieved a new world record for any work of digital art, the highest price for any lot in any online-only auction, the highest price for any winning bid placed online, and the highest total for any online-only auction. There were bidders from 11 countries and 22 million visitors tuned into Christie’s for the final minutes of bidding. Christie’s say that there were 33 active bidders, 55% from the Americas, 27% from Europe and 18% from Asia. 91% were new bidders at Christie’s.
Digital Art has been an established artistic medium since the advent of the personal computer. However, before the introduction of NFTs and Blockchain technology it was impossible for even the most celebrated digital artists to claim their place in the art market. These mechanisms have paved the way for future of art of purely digital means.
Beeple said:“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. This is work that has just as much craft, message, nuance and intent as anything made on a physical canvas and I am beyond honored and humbled to represent the digital art community in this historic moment.“
Mike Winklemann
Noah Davis, Specialist, Post-War and Contemporary Art, remarked: “Christie’s is thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Beeple, a brash pioneer among digital artists, to present the first purely digital NFT-based work of art ever offered by a major auction house. We see this as a pivotal moment for the future of New Media and even the practice of collecting itself. Everydays–The First 5000 Days is a monumental work comprised of 5,000 individual images created over the course of as many days, giving viewers the opportunity to zoom in and witness Beeple’s often irreverent but always engaging evolution as an artist pixel by pixel. The capacity to represent 13 years of an artist’s career in a single work perfectly illustrates the limitless nature of this medium. Not unlike the advent of Street Art as a blue chip collecting category, NFT-based art is on the threshold of becoming the next ingeniously disruptive force in the art market. Christie’s is proud to be in the vanguard of this exhilarating movement.”
