Christie’s offers “Eternally Contemporary” work by Beeple

Beeple (b. 1981), ‘HUMAN ONE (slowly_2).’ Christie’s

As a follow-up to the paradigm-shifting success of their March auction of Beeple NFT “Everydays – The First 5000 Days”, Christie’s will be offering a new work by the freshly popular artist during their 21st Century Art Evening Sale in November. For the occasion, Beeple created what is called a hybrid digital and physical sculpture consisting of four interconnected video screens; each of the screens displays an anonymous, spacesuit-clad hero trudging through constantly changing backgrounds. The sculpture interpolates images selected at random from a collection of images that the Ethereum blockchain has access to, and Beeple plans to add to this collection over time. In that sense, Christie’s claims that the sculpture is “eternally modern.”

Beeple, of course, shocked the art world when his NFT creation sold for $ 69,346,250 earlier this year. The sale was also one of the focal points of an industry-wide ocean change that has seen both museums, collectors and stoic auction houses struggle to adapt to the exploding interest in the non-fungible tokens. Appropriately, Beeple’s new video sculpture will be accompanied by an NFT representing the object’s underlying digital assets. Given the artist’s popularity and current success in the market, it is expected HUMAN ET could be sold for up to $ 15 million.

“I’m excited to explore concepts through this work of art that exploit the full potential of the digital art medium, in a way that has never been done before, and explore the unique potential of digital works to dynamically change over time,” Beeple (real name Mike Winkelmann) said in a statement. “While a traditional work of art is more akin to a limited statement, frozen in time the moment it was completed, this work of art’s unique ability to be updated makes it more akin to an ongoing conversation.” While some might argue that works of art that can be constantly updated are simply eternally unfinished, there is no doubt that Beeple has a new idea on its hands.