EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS was started on May 1st, 2007, and took 13 and a half years to finish. It consists of 5000 individually made digital works collaged in a rough timeline and was the first entirely digital piece of art sold at Christie’s. This piece, after further research, was indeed sold for approximately $69 million, though it was paid for in Ether in February of 2021 when the conversion was roughly 1,900 USD/ETH. The thought that this piece was worth the same as a Basquiat or a Picasso is astounding, and it makes me really mull over what exactly gives art value. Theoretically, paint and canvas would run a maker, at most, maybe $600 depending on the quality of the materials, yet paintings by famous artists routinely sell for upwards of $50 million. The hours of training leading up to the creation of a piece, in addition to the efforts put into designing and fabricating it, are where we place worth. With EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS, it took over 13 years to create the cells that make up this collage. Is it the time Beeple spent making each square that gives this worth? Is it that this piece consists of 5000 individual works, and they are worth $14,000 each? In this article, Beeple describes some of the drawings that make up this collage- some took him less than 5 minutes, and others had deep messaging and stories to them. To say that each of these pieces is worth over a month’s wages is, in my opinion, massively overinflated, but when you put them all together in one massive timeline, the growth of his artistic vision is clearly visible. I am particularly fond of his depiction of Mike Pence as the Lord of the Flies, and think it’s interesting that this piece stand equally weighted with the UBERjay sketch- they clearly took different lengths to create, different amount of effort, with entirely different impacts, yet they are equally crucial to the overall unity of EVERYDAYS.
"Beeple's Opus" Reading Response
Updated: Dec 14, 2022
