The third-most expensive work ever sold by a living artist – after pieces by Jeff Koons and David Hockney – was auctioned at Christie’s in March. But even more than its $69.3m price tag, what made the sale really distinctive was its format.
Everydays is a collage of digital images created by an artist from South Carolina – Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple. Each day, using 3D software, Winkelmann creates an image: cartoony works packed with pop culture figures, social media memes and crude satire (Biden urinating on Trump, for instance). Everydays comprised 5,000 of them.
“I do view this as the next chapter of art history,” Beeple declared. Art critics did not share his enthusiasm. But then again art, as the saying goes, is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it, and the cryptocurrency tycoon Vignesh Sundaresan felt it was worth $69.3m. He only did so, however, thanks to the growth of a new innovation: the non-fungible token (NFT).
NFTs use blockchain, the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies, to give a unique certificate to any given digital image. An NFT is…
