Art Stories – The First 5000 Days – Beeble
Mike Winkelmann is an American graphic designer. In May 2007 he drew an image of his Uncle Joe, called it Uber Jay (His nickname for his uncle) and shared it online. The next day he made another image and once again posted it online. He did the same thing the next day, and then the next day. In fact, every day for the past 13 years Mike has uploaded a new image. You can see them on his Instagram feed ‘beeple_crap’, Beeple being his online name when in graphic artist mode.
When Covid struck his design business work slowed down so he started to explore the world of cryptocurrencies, blockchains and Non-fungible tokens. Mike changed his focus from Winkelmann the designer to Beeple the artist and then had an idea…
He created a collage of all the “everyday”‘ images he had produced over the years and called it: Everydays: The First 5000 Days. Working with auction house Christie’s they created an online auction for the work that lasted for two weeks and started the bidding at $100.
Mike Winkelmann aka “Beeple”
On March 11th 2021 (2 weeks ago when writing this post) the winning bid for ‘The first 5000 Days’ by Beeble sold for $69,346,250 making Mike Winkelmann aka “Beeple” now one of the top three most valuable living artists in the world.
