The New Yorker: How did the so-called "kitsch" Beeple impact the art world?

This article is from The New Yorker, author: Kyle Chayka, columnist for The New Yorker, translated by: Leo Young.

Last October, the digital artist Mike Winkelmann, known as "Beeple," noticed that more and more people in his online circles were discussing a technology called non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

In summary, NFTs are a tool for verifying ownership of digital assets. Like cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, NFTs also use blockchain technology to permanently store data on a decentralized network, making it immutable. Anything can be turned into an NFT, from MP3s to JPEG images, tweets, or basketball video clips.

NFTs have been appearing in various forms for nearly a decade. As early as 2017, CryptoKitties created a marketplace for trading cartoon cat images, with some selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. They can be thought of as digital Beanie Babies, but with only one of each. NFTs in relation to artworks are similar to how museums authenticate the provenance of artworks by stamping them with a proprietary timestamp, allowing them to continue to circulate freely on the internet. In new online markets like Nifty Gateway, SuperRare, and Foundation, artists can upload or "mint" their works as NFTs and sell them.

Winkelmann consulted some friends in this emerging field, including the anonymous NFT artist Pak, known for his geometric designs, whose works have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Winkelmann, under the name Beeple, has received acclaim for his long-term daily art project, Everydays. In recent years, works from "Everydays" have combined dazzling cartoon expressiveness with various social themes, such as the coronavirus conquering Disney or Biden standing in the wilderness urinating on a giant Trump statue. Beeple has over two million followers on Instagram, and Winkelmann felt that NFTs could help him make money.

"My reputation is bigger than those artists. If they can make that much, I should be able to make a fortune," Winkelmann recalled thinking at the time, "Oh my God, this is too ridiculous."

On October 30, Winkelmann launched three art pieces on the NFT market Nifty Gateway to test his market acceptance. One of the pieces was titled "Politics is Nonsense," featuring a half-American flag bull defecating in a rain of dollars.

This piece was released in an edition of one hundred, each priced at one dollar. The core feature of blockchain technology is immutability: all recorded transactions are permanently logged and publicly transparent, which means that NFT transactions are entirely public. By March 2021, these editions had resold for over six hundred thousand dollars. (In the NFT market, when artworks are resold, artists receive a percentage of the fee, typically around 10%.) In December, Winkelmann held another auction, which included a selected piece from Everydays, The Complete MF Collection, as a single NFT. The artwork features zombies and giant Nintendo characters. This NFT came with physical accessories, a digital frame, and what is claimed to be Beeple's hair for verification. This piece sold for $777,777.

These are just a glimpse of Winkelmann's commercial success in the NFT space. In early March, his collage piece Everydays: The First 5000 Days was auctioned at Christie's starting at one hundred dollars, with an estimated sale price marked as "undetermined." On March 11, this piece sold for $69 million.

This sale made Winkelmann one of the top three living artists by auction price. The top two are Jeff Koons' Rabbit and David Hockney's Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), both of which sold for $90 million at Christie's. In monetary terms, Winkelmann has suddenly become a top contemporary artist, breaking public perceptions of the value of digital artworks. The buyer was Vignesh Sundaresan, a blockchain entrepreneur from Singapore, who manages the NFT fund Metapurse.

After the auction, another partner at Metapurse, Anand Venkateswaran, told Artnet, "This piece has the potential to become a work of art for a generation."

The sale of this piece is historically significant, and coupled with the rapid development of the NFT market, it has stirred a wave in the art world: can these kitschy internet works truly be compared to those carefully selected by art critics and dealers?

Time magazine published an article titled "Beeple Has Won. Here's What We've Lost," indifferent to the final price of NFTs. The saying goes, the value of art is determined by how much someone is willing to pay. However, the Time article disparaged Beeple's work as "violently erasing human value" and a trend towards "lowbrow entertainment." Artnet's Ben Davis also listed the crude political artworks in "Everydays," arguing that the recent years' "dumb, Mussolini-like Trump" type of art is ultimately ephemeral.

Reference: I Looked Through All 5,000 Images in Beeple's $69 Million Magnum Opus. What I Found Isn't So Pretty

It's not just art critics who find it hard to understand how Beeple's work skyrocketed to fame. Winkelmann does not have a background in modern art. When I asked him about the inspiration for an early piece in "Everydays," he replied, "To put it bluntly, you say 'abstract expressionism,' I have no idea what that is."

Winkelmann has been receiving invitations from the largest art museums around the world. Just hours before our interview, he received a message from Damien Hirst, an artist who has challenged the world for over a decade. He read it to me from his phone: "My fifteen-year-old son just showed me your work, it's fucking amazing, congratulations, it's great."

Mike Pence: King of Flies, "Everydays," October 7, 2020

The Next Chapter, "Everydays," March 11, 2021

Rather than being the ideal record-breaking artist, Winkelmann resembles a supporting character from the TV show The Office. Just two days before the Christie's auction ended, we chatted over Zoom, and he was clean-shaven, wearing half-rim glasses, with neatly parted light brown hair. Typically, if a well-known artist dresses this sharply, it must be for an international event. For Winkelmann, there is no idol-like quality, nor anything to embellish. At thirty-nine, he lives with his wife and two children in a modest four-bedroom house in the suburbs of Charleston, Southern California. During our call, there was no cluttered studio, no busy team or assistants; just a computer, beige wall hangings, a Walmart-style bookshelf, and a sixty-five-inch TV continuously playing CNN and Fox News. The only thing Winkelmann indulges in is frequent profanity, sometimes like a middle schooler who just learned to curse.

Winkelmann grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, where he was exposed to technology at a young age. His father was an electrical engineer who taught him how to program. The only art class he took was in his freshman year of high school. A friend introduced him to the electronic music label Warp Records and bands like Aphex Twin (real name Richard David James). "What can one person and a computer do?" Winkelmann said. "I always thought that concept was cool because, in a way, the computer is an equalizer."

Winkelmann then attended Purdue University to study computer science, but he ultimately felt lost. He found programming incredibly boring. He turned to shooting self-narrated short films with a webcam and learning digital design. Inspired by video artist Chris Cunningham and the British studio Designers Republic, he created geometric animations set to his own electronic music and posted them online.

In 2003, at the age of twenty-two, he adopted the name Beeple, inspired by an ancient Ewok (Star Wars character) animal. Now he collects Beeple figurines from eBay. As he spoke, he picked one up from his desk to show me. Winkelmann covered the plush toy's eyes, and it made a beeping sound. He felt the name suited him well, matching the visuals and sounds in his videos.

He started the "Everydays" project in 2007, but for a long time, his video works were more famous. His looping animations quickly became popular backgrounds for family gatherings and live concerts, constantly borrowed and remixed by other creators. Mark Costello, an interactive designer in Washington, told me, "My friends and I would use this as the main material and then add personalized elements." Winkelmann eventually developed a lucrative business model, doing graphic design and animation for commercial clients like Louis Vuitton, Apple, and Justin Bieber. During the Super Bowl halftime show, he helped create performance projections (which he described as "just some white cube garbage"). Meanwhile, he never stopped creating "Everydays," posting them on his blog, then on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. On his personal website, he displays his works in order, showing the number of days at the top (as of Monday, it was 5,074 days, roughly fourteen years).

Initially, "Everydays" consisted of doodles on paper: hands, cartoon characters, naked women. A year later, Winkelmann began using the 3D software suite Cinema 4D for digital creation. His most popular themes are technology utopias or dystopias, featuring machines made of shiny metal or dazzling crystals. His abstract style resembles a form of Suprematism (a movement initiated by the Soviet artist Kazimir Malevich in the twentieth century) and shares similarities with graphic design.

Reference: The Prophet Malevich's revolution

If Beeple's works are somewhat kitschy, it's due to the strong sense of repetition that Winkelmann has cultivated. During the interview, he showed me his computer screen and opened Cinema 4D. This program is like a 3D version of Photoshop. In the center is a large empty space: the digital artist's blank canvas. I watched Winkelmann use keyboard shortcuts and move the mouse to adjust a gray pillar. He quietly operated for a minute or two, shrinking and expanding it until it took the shape of a bicycle handlebar. "Look at this, I've been working on it for so long, it’s just a pile of shit," he said.

After "Everydays" began in 2017, Winkelmann started using traditional 3D models from websites like TurboSquid. This marked the clearest emergence of Winkelmann's personal style. With just a few keystrokes, he could input characters like astronauts, roller coasters, Bart Simpson, or Michael Jackson, and freely blend them together.

"For me, it's like a giant toy collection," he said. One of his more obscure works features Mike Pence as a gladiator, standing atop a burning White House, surrounded by giant flies (a reference to the insect that appeared during the vice presidential debate) ------ he spent about an hour and a half on this piece. He enjoys painting daily news themes, memes, and Twitter controversies. (He said he is anti-Trump, "but usually pokes fun at both parties.") After the Christie's auction, he created another piece featuring Buzz Lightyear riding Jeff Koons' balloon dog, and another pixelated version of the Mona Lisa.

Winkelmann's daily goal is to create "the coolest fucking painting," he told me, "a painting I've never seen before." Usually, this can be somewhat sensational. He mentioned a painting he created at a fan's request featuring a Shrek-themed death metal band. In the painting, two Shrek characters have devilish red eyes, while a third stabs his donkey friend with a guitar. It's a painting I certainly had never seen before, but that doesn't mean I would ponder it deeply.

Winkelmann takes pride in his understated sharpness and outsider perspective, which inevitably leads to comparisons with KAWS (the pseudonym of American artist Brian Donnelly, whose work is exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum). KAWS often uses cartoon icons, including jokes from The Simpsons. His works primarily feature a melancholic skull-headed Mickey Mouse "Companion" character. His works have sparked much controversy and garnered many devoted fans: KAWS' giant sculptures still attract visitors to museums, and one of his paintings sold for over $1.4 million in 2019. But Winkelmann told me he has no connection with Donnelly. "You're just repeating the same thing," Winkelmann said, "most artists have a distinct style they invest in, perhaps for their entire lives. But I particularly dislike that."

The style of "Everydays" continues to evolve, but the tone was established early on. Beeple's early works had a strong 4Chan style, with a provocative edge, often touching on themes like "art hormones" and "black phalluses." ("If I were to do that now, I wouldn't touch those." When I asked about these works, Winkelmann said, "If I did that, I'd be 'canceled' a hundred times next week.") Browsing Twitter, looking at skeletal, anatomical Hillary Clintons, bionic monsters, and dismembered Pikachus, these fleeting images can be exhausting. His works are not like Richard Prince's Instagram reproductions, which calmly articulate the meaninglessness of social media content. His works are part of social media, prompting likes and endless scrolling. Their highest achievement is a digital time capsule, capturing the overstimulated yet barren hive mind of the internet.

Winkelmann's Everydays: The First 5000 Days is the third most expensive artwork by a living artist

Young artists in the traditional art world unexpectedly achieving high auction incomes often burden them. The prices attract speculators more concerned with making money than nurturing artists. This craze is short-lived, and prices decline as the hype fades. Galleries and agents carefully consider before placing an artist's work in the appropriate series. They use peer pressure to prevent artists from stagnating. In contrast, the NFT market has unclear operating rules. Anonymous collectors purchase works with unregulated digital currencies at will; there are many unknown millionaires in crypto, but no direct way to spend crypto assets.

Buying NFTs is an anomaly within anomalies. The works may appreciate as cryptocurrency prices rise. The money converted into fiat currency still remains within the cryptocurrency system, and crypto optimists can interpret NFT trading as a validation of blockchain technology. Investors can now choose to purchase NFTs in the form of digital art, minted special editions, or metaphors.

In February, artist Grimes' animated work sold for $8 million on Nifty Gateway. "These people can speculate on anything, but they just started speculating on my work, which is why my work is blowing up so fast," Winkelmann said.

The commonality of successful NFT works is their association with popular creators online. Just like Instagram influencers sell sponsorships, NFTs are a way to monetize fame. Winkelmann views his buyers as "investors rather than collectors." In the traditional art realm, this phenomenon may not be significantly different, but most artists would shy away from stating it so bluntly.

Twenty-eight-year-old NFT collector Tim Kang spent $777,777 to acquire The Complete MF Collection, an NFT work sold by Beeple last December.

Kang is neat and tidy, speaking softly. In a recent video interview, he wore a T-shirt with street art and continuously vaped during the conversation. He studies finance and computer science at the University of California, North, and began investing in Ethereum in 2016. Last November, he spent $42,000 on SuperRare to buy Pak's NFT work Möbius Knot, which set a record price on SuperRare at the time.

Kang said Winkelmann's success affirmed his belief that NFTs are the future. One day, everything we buy, whether digital or not, cars, bananas, Netflix subscriptions, will be recorded on the blockchain. I could sense his reverence for The Complete MF Collection in his words. "As soon as I saw it, I liked it immediately; I felt like no one had made something like this," he said, "I realized legendary artists would emerge in this field." Kang has collected five works by Beeple. Since the Christie's auction, these collectibles have appreciated, but he stated he has no plans to sell. I asked if he would buy other artworks. He said he also likes the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami: "I splurge on NFTs. I invest a lot in traditional artworks too."

Kang summarized the dilemma NFTs bring to the art world. Should curators change their aesthetic standards to cater to the surging wealth from crypto assets? Or should they ignore NFTs, risking neglecting new buyers who might be interested in collecting physical art? Before Beeple's auction, Christie's had already auctioned several blockchain assets. In October 2020, they auctioned Robert Alice's Block 21. Christie's contemporary art expert Noah Davis told me he had noticed Winkelmann's early NFT sales. "The bidders have no feeling for the work; they look at the numbers on the panel, and that's what they pay attention to." In January, Davis's colleague Meghan Doyle asked him if he was interested in auctioning NFT works. Subsequently, the NFT market MakersPlace reached out to Christie's and Winkelmann to auction Beeple's work.

Winkelmann initially suggested selling the five-thousandth piece from the "Everydays" series. It was a self-portrait, with a child drawing in the foreground, while characters from the Beeple world gathered in the background: a bloodied Trump and Mickey Mouse, a large-breasted Kim Jong-un and Jackson, and a sugar-coated Buzz Lightyear. For Christie's, Davis felt this painting was "not very representative." Subsequently, Winkelmann proposed the pixelated collage of the five thousand works from "Everydays." This approach emphasized the scale of the project while downplaying the uncomfortable details. "For me, this is truly a landmark moment," Davis said, "a series of unique paintings, Instagram is like a preordained work by Duchamp." Those who find it hard to bear might say this concept is no different from displaying a pile of sketches.

Davis compared Beeple's auction to other recent frenzies like GameStop, where traders on Reddit rushed to buy shares of the video game retailer, and Elon Musk bought $1.5 billion in Bitcoin through Tesla. All of this is part of the meme economy, turning internet trends into big money.

Christie's has determined to enter the emerging NFT market, weighing the gains against the losses. "Before the auction, there were no institutions to authenticate these artists. There were no top galleries chasing them," Davis said. Art critic Jerry Saltz stated in an Instagram post that Christie's decision to collaborate with Winkelmann was purely speculative. He wrote that Christie's and Sotheby's cater to "those who like to buy trendy artworks in public, paying the highest price, with the most kitschy taste."

Even the most accommodating renowned galleries in digital technology find it hard to persuade collectors to purchase digital works. Many feel secure only when they have a paper contract and store it on a hard drive or USB. A few young digital artists have successfully sold physical artworks. For example, large printed artworks by Petra Cortright and Cory Arcangel have earned five to six figures. However, NFTs like GIFs cannot fetch such high prices because they do not attract a group of radical crypto art collectors.

Kelani Nichole, founder of the digital art gallery TRANSFER, told me that in the NFT art market, only Beeple's name stands out; his works can at least be seen as political satire, which is his unique artistic signature. Many other works she has seen lack such impact. "These stupid memes or algorithmic art, Manfred Mohr did this much cooler decades ago," Nichole said, "it's just about asserting rights. There's no aesthetic value, no content."

NFTs also pose significant ethical issues. The computer networks running blockchain infrastructure consume vast amounts of electricity. London artist and engineer Memo Akten estimates that one NFT transaction on Ethereum is equivalent to four days of electricity consumption for a European resident. In this sense, minting artworks on the blockchain is not beneficial for sustainable systems. Artists, including Winkelmann, have been trying to offset the damage by purchasing carbon offsets. "Everything I do is not friendly to carbon emissions; if there's a coefficient, it should be ten," he told me.

Reference: The Unreasonable Ecological Cost of #CryptoArt (Part 1)

In fact, it has long been pointed out that whether artists use blockchain or not, resources will be consumed. Additionally, transporting various physical artworks for global art exhibitions is also not particularly environmentally friendly. New Mexico artist Sara Ludy told me in early March that she was hesitating to create NFT works. "I'm very concerned about my impact on the environment," she said. Subsequently, she created her first NFT work for a "carbon-neutral" charity auction.

She told me that the NFT market is very appealing to traditional artists who have not achieved financial stability. Ludy is represented by Bitforms, a well-known tech-focused gallery. She creates abstract perspectives of historical themes in virtual reality environments. In her eight years of collaboration with Bitforms, the gallery has only sold one of her works. "If my friends could avoid being laid off, support themselves and their families, and have health insurance, that would be great," she said. After that, she fully immersed herself in NFT creation.

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts love to talk about NFTs as a fair force in creative culture. On the blockchain, there is no authority dictating who can buy what and who cannot. But for now, the NFT market still seems to replicate the existing hierarchy of the art world, with many participants but only a few gaining fame.

Winkelmann said he wants to use the money earned from selling NFTs to create large-scale works: physical installations, interactive technologies, and more works that no one has seen before. Nevertheless, his lifestyle has not changed much. Luxury items do not attract him; he said, "Maybe I've never seen a fucking Ferrari or Lamborghini, but I know what they are; they are things that have already been invented." Even before the pandemic, he could go days without stepping outside. He has no relatives in the Charleston area, except for a brother who worked as an engineer at Boeing and now works for Winkelmann after resigning in December. There are some expenses now. "Now we have armed security outside our door," Winkelmann told me last week, to protect against intrusions.

After the Christie's auction ended, he had his brother book a private jet to Miami to celebrate. They booked an Airbnb. The auction payment was transferred to his account: "Boom, I had $53 million in my account. My reaction was, what the hell." The payment was made in Ethereum, and its value began to fluctuate immediately. Winkelmann was scared by this volatility and quickly converted the Ethereum into dollars.

"I'm not a pure crypto enthusiast," he told me. "I was making art before this thing existed; if NFTs were to disappear tomorrow, I would still be making digital art."

To this day, Winkelmann says he still purely considers himself a designer, experimenting with different corporate promotions. He does not accept the label of "artist." "I think if you pretend to be something you're not, it ruins the whole thing," he said.

I pointed out that he speaks like a distinctive artist: self-driven, doing his own thing, regardless of how much money he makes, pursuing his own vision. "Now I'm very interested in art history," he said, "we've completed it. I want to get a degree in art history. Because I'm in this state, oh, wait, what has happened in the past few hundred years (in the art world)?"