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Beeple, EVERYDAY: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS, 2021. Courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd. The sale of this non-fungible token (NFT) for a whopping $69.3 million was perhaps the biggest art market story of the year. The work—a composition containing works from the series “Everyday's” by the artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple—was significant for being the first NFT sold by a major auction house when it was included in a Christie’s sale this spring. Every day started bidding at just $100, but over the next few weeks, it would blow past the $1 million barriers, ending up at a price around $9 million the day before the sale ended. From there, bidding grew in leaps and bounds to end up at this astonishing final hammer price, one that landed Beeple among the top three most expensive living artists at auction, alongside David Hockney and Jeff Koons. The ramifications of this stratospheric sale are still being felt, but the $69.3 million sales of Everdays can be seen as a blinking neon signal of the widespread eagerness for new modes of collecting and distributing art in our digital age.
The Most Expensive Artworks Sold in 2021
Beeple, EVERYDAY: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS, 2021. Courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd. The sale of this non-fungible token (NFT) for a whopping $69.3 million was perhaps the biggest art market story of the year. The work—a composition containing works from the series “Everyday's” by the artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple—was significant for being the first NFT sold by a major auction house when it was included in a Christie’s sale this spring. Every day started bidding at just $100, but over the next few weeks, it would blow past the $1 million barriers, ending up at a price around $9 million the day before the sale ended. From there, bidding grew in leaps and bounds to end up at this astonishing final hammer price, one that landed Beeple among the top three most expensive living artists at auction, alongside David Hockney and Jeff Koons. The ramifications of this stratospheric sale are still being felt, but the $69.3 million sales of Everdays can be seen as a blinking neon signal of the widespread eagerness for new modes of collecting and distributing art in our digital age.