By selling an NFT work depicting Donald Trump naked for more than $ 6.6 million in cryptocurrency on February 25, American artist Beeple is more than ever the man to follow in the still nascent digital arts community.
His real name Mike Winkelmann, Beeple is however not a beginner and is one of the most prominent artists, attests to its 1.9 million subscribers on his Instagram account. Multi-millionaire in cryptocurrency and dollars, this father nevertheless lives modestly in Wisconsin and still drives an old Toyota Corolla which he affectionately calls his “pile of crap”. And yet, on the international scene and as art collectors, Beeple is one of the most influential creators.
His speciality ? Digital art. Beeple thus exploits the videos and images that it anchors in an imaginary strongly influenced by current events. The duo Daft Punk announces their separation? Beeple imagines them dissolving in space-time. Donald Trump loses in the presidential election? He represents him helpless, face down with the word "loser" prominently tattooed on his skin. We can no longer count his works featuring the most powerful men in this world, from Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos through Kim Jong-un in particular. But man also appropriates our collective imagination by portraying characters from Star Wars, King Kong, Pokémon or Toy Story for example. Buzz L'Eclair is also one of his favorite characters. Above all, man is part of a post-apocalyptic current which predominates his art.
Mike Winkelmann is also already well integrated in the international media sphere. Its various collaborations with brands such as Nike, Apple, Samsung, Coca Cola or SpaceX quickly increased its rating. And in the arts, Beeple is everywhere, including to highlight shows by Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj, One Direction or Deadmau5. His very prolific work bears witness to this. The man has indeed set himself the goal of producing one work per day and it has been going on for more than 13 years.
ALREADY A MAJOR ARTIST OF NFT
At the start of 2021, the madness of NFTs (Non fungible tokens) which is based on blockchain and cryptocurrencies is once again putting Beeple at the center of attention. Speculators and collectors pay impressive sums to acquire his works, often betting on his notoriety. Why NFTs? Quite simply because if everyone can see and admire a work posted online on the Web, the fact that this work is encrypted in the blockchain gives it a unique status and therefore suitable for being collected.
To discover the world of Beeple, I invite you to take a look at its website :
and more particularly this one :
https://www.beeple-collect.com/
Where you can discover some of his virtual works but also those in the form of physical NFT ( unfortunately already all sold )
For me, this artist is to be followed absolutely because the price of these works explodes after their initial sales such as, for example, her NFT representing a retrospective of the whole year 2020 at an initial selling price of 1 Dollars.
