It is widely known that artists are quick to incorporate societal changes into their art, but the art world is less nimble – more like a large oil tanker, which cannot quickly change course. Now it’s time to play Simon Says with the new generation of millennials. Their customers have mainly been from an older wealthy generation, but they managed to partially rejuvenate their clientele with so-called “trust fund babies” in the early 2000s, who also secured an interest in artists from their own generation. The classic auction houses have long thrived as purveyors of exclusivity, with unique physical objects. Christie’s is thus breaking new ground, becoming the first major auction house to offer an NFT work (or Non-Fungible Token, a digital fingerprint that secures the work’s originality via blockchain technology) at auction. The work for sale is a pixelated digital work comprising five thousand ‘Everydays’, images that Beeple has created and published online every day since. Beeple has 1.8 million followers on Instagram, collaborates with several luxury brands, and has created concert visuals for celebrities such as Niki Minaj and Ariana Grande, but he’s not really a household name within the more traditional art world.

When Christie’s, one of the world’s most prestigious auction houses, recently announced that it would be selling the digital artwork Everydays: The First 5000 Days (2021) by the artist Beeple (Mike Winkelmann), it created a huge interest in the art world. Beeple, Everydays: The First 5000 Days, 2021.

A brave new world art