Crypto Art Biography: Beeple, an artist from a dystopian future

Written by: 0x13, Rhythm BlockBeats

On December 7th, the well-known encryption artist Pak became the first work whose turnover exceeded 1 million The crypto artist of the dollar has aroused extensive discussions among crypto artists and enthusiasts. While congratulating Pak for winning this award, they are excited about the future of crypto art.

5 days later, excitement was pushed to new heights with a major auction by another crypto artist, Beeple.

The auction of Beeple officially started on December 12, and the turnover reached as high as 582,000 US dollars within five minutes. Cumulative turnover exceeded US$1.1 million. According to data from cryptoart.io, an encrypted art data insight platform, as of press time, Beeple has sold a total of 824 NFT artworks, with a total value of approximately US$6.4 million, ranking first among all encrypted artists.

Beeple broke Pak's record in just one day and was well ahead. Some people can't help but ask: "Where is the sacred Beeple"?

「Everydays」

Beeple, formerly known as Mike Winkelmann, is a graphic designer from Charleston, South Carolina, USA. He has done various kinds of digital art works, including short films, Creative Commons VJ loops and VR / AR works. Concert visuals for Bieber, One Direction, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Eminem, Zedd, deadmau5 and more. In addition, his other identity is the initiator of the "Everydays" movement in the current 3D digital art field.

British writer Malcolm Gladwell wrote in the book "Outliers": "In people's eyes The reason why a genius is extraordinary is not superior talent, but continuous hard work. 10,000 hours of tempering is a necessary condition for anyone to become a world-class master from an ordinary person.”

This is the famous "10,000-hour law". Divide these 10,000 hours into each day, about ten years, and practice three hours a day. If you persist, you will become a world-class master in this field.

But Beeple has persisted for 13 years, and since 2007 has completed a creation every day, and has never been absent.

This may be the first thing that everyone who knows about Beeple will mention Beeple to others . May 1, 2007 Beeple created his first sketch, a portrait of his uncle. It is not difficult to see that his artistic level at that time was far from what it is now, and the quality of his works was very rough, but who hasn't been a beginner?

First work by Beeple on May 1, 2007

As he practiced and created day after day, he made rapid and obvious progress. Mysterious and spooky plots, futuristic landscapes and wild dreams began to appear in his works. Beeple says he never misses a day:

 

“Even on the day my daughter was born, I It took some time to complete a digital sketch.”

Beeple regards his action of creating a painting every day as a work of art and named it "Everydays".

 

“In addition to the practical technical skills I’ve learned along the way, I’ve also learned a lot about how to complete projects and Persist in the knowledge of doing something."

 

Beeple believes that "Everydays" is to break down a big project into small goals , People can stick to a good idea to complete. In addition, when an inspiration appears in your mind, you can capture it in time and try to draw it. After practical operation, you can distinguish the quality of the idea, which is of great help to the subsequent creation.

 

Beeple believes that insisting on creating every day is as normal as brushing teeth and eating every day, and he will not delay creation because of other things , he has completed works in airports, coffee shops and even emergency rooms. "Don't begrudge your creativity, it will make you last longer. And don't be pretentious because you make art, it's as common as eating and sleeping."

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In addition to the "day" as the unit of creation, Beeple also learns a new set of skills every year. He has tried sketching, digital photography, vector illustration, 3D animation, etc. Beeple through the source Constantly absorbing knowledge and constantly enriching one's "arms arsenal".

"I have been creating for more than ten years, and I can assure you that my fans have accumulated very slowly over the years. For three years, almost no one even looked at my works, so when one or two people browsed my paintings, I felt very lucky.”

 

< h3 style="text-align: left;">Inspiration perpetual motion machine

 

When I first saw Beeple’s works, many People will find it weird, ridiculous, and creepy, and the content of the painting looks like a distorted reality, or the foreseeable future. Spaceships, dense wires, artificial humans and other things often appear in the picture. However, if you dig deeper into the content of each painting, you will find that the content of the paintings is much more interesting.

 

Beeple incorporates Mickey Mouse, KFC, Winnie the Pooh, Amazon, Netflix, Emoji, Smurfs and more into her work Images that often appear in cyberpunk and post-apocalypse, these are fascinating. And Beeple often adds his own image in his works, either as the protagonist or as a passerby.

There seems to be a perpetual motion machine in Beeple's brain, and his thirteen years of creation have not exhausted his inspiration.

 

“It’s not a problem for me to find inspiration, what I care about is how to make my work unconventional.”

 

Beeple said that there are countless excellent works on the Internet today, when he browses Tumblr, Behance or Instagram, Feeling overwhelmed at times, he sometimes fears that his work will be "overwhelmed" by these excellent works. As for the continuous inspiration, Beeple attributes it to the daily Deadline of "Everydays".

 

Out of demands on himself, Beeple will force himself to create every day, even if the inspiration at that time is relatively low-level. He believes that relatively low-level inspiration is also very important, and it is a process of accumulation of artistic creation. When creators carry out daily creation with this mentality, they will not worry that they cannot have genius-like ideas every day, and more is better. With this kind of accumulation, creative ideas will emerge slowly.

Artists of Dystopian Future

 

“Now my inspiration comes from these sci-fi futuristic landscapes.”

 

Currently, many futuristic, Many cyberpunk and dystopian works are by-products of video games and feature films, and audiences rarely see these crazy, complex, and excellent works from other channels. A lover of the genre, Beeple is also very interested in politics, technology and the power dynamics between the two, and the relationship between technology and society. And this is gradually reflected in his works.

Beeple often incorporates black humor into his works, some people may think this is his bad taste, but like the "weird" of these "weird" works People are clearly in the majority.

 

Post-apocalyptic art tends to emerge in times of environmental, sociopolitical, and technological anxiety. The Vietnam War gave birth to Planet of the Apes, 9/11 gave birth to The Road, the year before Y2K gave birth to The Matrix, and so on. Although post-apocalyptic art seems to take us to a ridiculous, fictional and distant future, in fact, these imaginations make us think more about the present.

 

Like much post-apocalyptic art, Beeple’s work frequently explores gender and reproduction, governance, technological dependence and These themes of popular culture, such as Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump's robots, Michael Jackson's host matrix, and everything in between the humanities and technology. But how different is that Beeple is optimistic about the development of the world. The scene he described in his works is what Beeple might have seen when he extrapolated the social phenomena he observed, and deduced the social trend to an extreme situation, which may be the situation that develops in an extreme way at a certain time 50 years later. impact on society.

 

"These things are possible, but there is a greater possibility that they will not happen, I just offer It’s an interesting way to look at what’s going on.”

 

Through this extreme play, Beeple’s The works are more able to make people realize how ridiculous what they are doing now. His dark humor allows every viewer to scrutinize the uncomfortable details in the image, which is why Beeple's work is exciting: through exaggerated deduction, people are given space to explore and think about their position on things, while It can even make both sides of the opposition question their own beliefs.

 

" My intention was to make something really weird and out of the ordinary that would give you questions to think about, rather than answers."

Reference Source:

"Beeple on creating a zombie Mark Zuckerberg and flesh-eating Baby Yoda to examine the times"

"Mike Winkelmann Has Spent The Last Decade Drawing An Image A Day"< /blockquote>

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