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Purdue University Purdue University is a Public university#United States, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded ...

, occupation = Digital artist , years_active = 1999–present , era = , employer = , organization = , website = , agent = , known_for = , notable_works = "Everydays", '' Everydays: the First 5000 Days'' , style = , net_worth = , height = , television = , title = , term = , predecessor = , successor = , party = , movement = , opponents = , boards = , criminal_charges = , criminal_penalty = , criminal_status = , callsign = , awards = , module = , module2 = , module3 = , module4 = , module5 = , module6 = , signature = , signature_size = , signature_alt = , footnotes = Michael Joseph Winkelmann (born June 20, 1981), known professionally as Beeple, is an American

digital art Digital art, or the digital arts, is artistic work that uses Digital electronics, digital technology as part of the creative or presentational process. It can also refer to computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960 ...

ist,

graphic designer A graphic designer is a practitioner who follows the discipline of graphic design, either within companies or organizations or independently. They are professionals in design and visual communication, with their primary focus on transforming ...

, and

animator An animator is an artist who creates images, known as frames, which give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, and video games. Animat ...

known for selling

NFT A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that is recorded on a blockchain and is used to certify ownership and authenticity. It cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the blockchai ...

s. In his art, he uses various media to create comical, phantasmagoric works which make political and social commentary while using

pop culture Popular culture (also called pop culture or mass culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as popular art pop_art.html" ;"title="f. pop art">f. pop artor mass art, some ...

figures as references. British auction house

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Geneva, Shan ...

said he is, "A visionary digital artist at the forefront of NFTs". Beeple was introduced to NFTs in October 2020 and credits Pak for providing his first "primer" on selling NFTs. The NFT associated with '' Everydays: the First 5000 Days'', a collage of images from his "Everydays" series, was sold on March 12, 2021, for $69 million in

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership record ...

to an investor in NFTs. It is the first purely

non-fungible token A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that is recorded on a blockchain and is used to certify ownership and authenticity. It cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the blockchai ...

to be sold by Christie's. The auction house had previously sold ''Block 21'', an NFT with accompanying physical painting for approximately $130,000 in October 2020.

Education

Winkelmann was born on June 20, 1981. He grew up in North Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. His father worked as an

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and his mother worked at a

senior center A senior center (or senior centre or older adult center) is a type of community center where older adults congregate for fellowship with others to fulfill many of their social, physical, emotional, and intellectual needs. A regular part of senio ...

. Mike graduated from

in 2003 majoring in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

Art career

"Everydays"

Mike Winkelmann began "Everydays", which involved creating a piece of art every day, on May 1, 2007. The project is ongoing and spans more than 5,000 consecutive days of digital art creation. He has discussed completing a piece of art even on days when it was inconvenient, like on his wedding day and the dates of his children's births. The project was inspired by Tom Judd, who drew every day for a year. Winkelmann thought it was a beneficial way to sharpen his drawing skills. In subsequent years, he focused on one skill or medium per year, including

Adobe Illustrator Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor and Computer-aided design, design software developed and marketed by Adobe Inc., Adobe. Originally designed for the Apple Inc., Apple Mac (computer), Macintosh, development of Adobe Illustrator began ...

in 2012 and

Cinema 4D Cinema 4D is a 3D software suite developed by the German company Maxon. Overview As of R21, only a single version of Cinema 4D is available. It replaces all previous variants, including BodyPaint 3D, and includes all features of the past 'Stu ...

in 2015. Winkelmann's works often depict

dystopian A dystopia (lit. "bad place") is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. It is an imagined place (possibly state) in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmenta ...

futures. Frequently he uses recognizable figures from popular culture or politics to satirize current events. Some of Winkelmann's works were incorporated into

Louis Vuitton Louis Vuitton Malletier SAS, commonly known as Louis Vuitton (, ), is a French Luxury goods, luxury fashion house and company founded in 1854 by Louis Vuitton (designer), Louis Vuitton. The label's LV monogram appears on most of its products, ...

's Spring/Summer 2019 ready-to-wear collection.

Louis Vuitton

In 2019, Beeple’s Everydays was featured in Louis Vuitton’s Spring/Summer 2019 Ready-To-Wear collection. Nine Everydays were featured in the collection which was revealed during

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

Fashion Week at the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

. When asked by School of Motion how he thought the everyday was going to be displayed, Beeple said,“I actually thought they might not end up using them at all. So when my wife and I went to the show at the Louvre, which was just an insane experience, we half expected to not see my work at all. But then a model came out wearing one of my Everyday on her shirt... ‘Oh My God!’ It was crazy surreal. One model after the next came out wearing something I’d made.”

VJ Loops

Between 2009 and 2019, Beeple created VJ Loops. The short abstract digital art pieces were released under Creative Commons and are free for any use. They have been downloaded millions of times for use at thousands of live events all over the world. The clips are intended as source material for creatives all over the world and number in the hundreds.

NFT sales

In February 2020, Winkelmann started selling

s, digital tokens associated with works of art whose ownership is verified by a

blockchain The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...

. The first sale of a Beeple NFT titled "SUPER EXTRACTION" took place at ETH Denver in February 2020., and more were sold on

Nifty Gateway Nifty Gateway Studio (“NGS”) is a full-service, digital production studio working with creators and brands to develop and distribute immersive social entertainment and creative experiences onchain. NGS is known for its collaborations with cr ...

in November 2020. One of these NFTs, ''Crossroad'', would change into one of two animations depending on the victor of the

2020 United States presidential election United States presidential election, Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 3, 2020. The Democratic Party (United States), Democratic ticket of former vice president Joe Biden and California junior senator Kamala H ...

; it was sold for $66,666.66 and resold for $6.7 million in February 2021. The NFT associated with '' Everydays: the First 5000 Days'', a collage of images from the "Everydays" series, was put up for auction at

on February 25 and sold for $69,400,000 on March 11, 2021. This was the first NFT to be sold by a legacy auction house, and is the first sale at Christie's that could be paid in

Ether In organic chemistry, ethers are a class of compounds that contain an ether group, a single oxygen atom bonded to two separate carbon atoms, each part of an organyl group (e.g., alkyl or aryl). They have the general formula , where R and R� ...

. In March 2021 Beeple called NFTs an "irrational exuberance bubble". On January 30, 2024 his artwork, made in 2021 in collaboration with TIME, ''"TIME: The future of Business"'', previously owned by 3AC, was auctioned at

Sotheby's Sotheby's ( ) is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine art, fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

and sold for $177,800.

Human One

On November 9, 2021, one of Beeple's artworks (Human One) was sold at

for $28,958,000 to collector Ryan Zurrer. The artwork is a 7-foot-high sculpture; a generative work of art, a dynamically changing hybrid sculpture, both physically and digitally. Beeple described the artwork as ''"the first portrait of a human born in the metaverse."'' It is the first major work made by the artist that has both a sculptural and NFT component. After the sale, Human One was exhibited at the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art in April 2022. It was the artist's debut museum exhibition. Then, the work was shown at the M+ Museum, marking the work's Asian premiere and the artist's first solo show in

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

The Tree of Knowledge

In 2024, Beeple unveiled his new generative sculpture "The Tree of Knowledge" at Italian Tech Week. The sculpture features four video screens forming a rectangular pillar, displaying an endless video of a tree intertwined with industrial elements. Influenced by real-time data, including news channels, stock and cryptocurrency tickers, the sculpture is both a critique to modern society and a call to action for urgent environmental awareness. Viewers can adjust the display from "Signal" (order) to "Noise" (chaos). The piece was sold to investment management company Lingotto, with proceeds supporting non-profit initiatives all over the world.

Beeple Studios

In 2021, Beeple began building a team and working in various locations in

Charleston, South Carolina Charleston is the List of municipalities in South Carolina, most populous city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. The city lies just south of the geographical midpoint of South Carolina's coastline on Charleston Harbor, an inlet of the Atla ...

, before finding a home at Beeple Studios in the fall of 2021. Beeple Studios is a 50,000 sq ft space in Charleston which houses offices, lab spaces, a white wall gallery, and an immersive experiential space for showcasing digital art, and has been described as “a weird mix of Warhol’s studio and Bell Labs.” The studio had its grand opening on March 11, 2023 with a large event that had the biggest names in the crypto, NFT, and traditional art worlds in attendance. Since then, Beeple has hosted additional events and is still actively planning and producing live events.

Solo Exhibitions (Selected)

* 2025: ''Tree of Knowledge'', Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC * 2024: ''Tales from a Synthetic Future'', DEJI Art Museum, Nanjing * 2024: ''Tree of Knowledge'', Italian Tech Week, Turin * 2023: ''Human One'', Castello di Rivoli, Rivoli, Italy * 2023: ''Human One'', Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, AR * 2022: ''Human One'', M+ Hong Kong * 2022: ''Uncertain Future'', Jack Hanley Gallery, NYC * 2019: ''12 Years of Everydays'', Northern Contemporary, Toronto, Canada

Personal life

Winkelmann is based in

North Charleston, South Carolina North Charleston is a city in Berkeley, Charleston, and Dorchester counties in the U.S. state of South Carolina.City Planning Department (2008-07)City of North Charleston boundary map. City of North Charleston. Retrieved January 21, 2011. As ...

, and moved there from

Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

in 2017. He is married and has two children.

References

External links

Beeple Crap website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Winkelmann, Mike 1981 births 21st-century American artists 21st-century American male artists American animators American digital artists Artists from Wisconsin American graphic artists Living people People associated with Ethereum People from Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin American video jockeys American political artists