The way art is valued is baffling to many, especially where contemporary art is concerned. While one can reasonably see why classic works of art, many with elevated historical and cultural significance, would fetch a high price at auction, other works can be a bit harder to understand, which is what makes a JPG that sold for $69 million such an eye-raising piece.
It'd be hard to criticize anyone for wondering what could possibly be contained in a single file that makes it worth such a large amount of money, especially because of how easily files can be copied and redistributed. The piece, created by artist Mike Winklemann, better known as Beeple, is dubbed "Everydays - The First Five Thousand Days." Instead of being a single artwork, the JPG is 5,000 individual pieces of art placed together in a sort of collage. Still, the price tag still puts Pokemon card auctions to shame.
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Essentially, the image is a collection of all the work that Beeple uploaded daily since 2007. Bidding for the piece started at $100, but in the final few minutes of the auction, the price ballooned, with more than 180 bids flooding in. The price was almost set at $30 million, but in the final seconds, 33 bidders contested it, which added two more minutes to the bid and led to a $69.3 million final price, including fees.
This is a record-breaking auction for Christie's, the website that facilitated the auction. In fact, it's the third-largest sum ever bad for a living artist's work at an auction, so it's notable for several reasons. This also stands as incredible example of an immensly expensive non-fungible token, a sort of transaction stored on the blockchain. NFTs have been in the news quite a bit lately, and this piece was even sold through Ethereum, a popular form of cryptocurrency.
The rise of the internet has made artwork far more accessible, leading to a sharp rise in independent art projects. For many, that means working hard to create things like video game fan art as a way to stand out from the crowd. Of course, there are many other types of small artists as well, with cosplayers, in particular, carving out a large piece of the pie in the gaming scene.
Regardless, such a high price tag for something that seems so simple is guaranteed to garner some sidelong glances. The conversation around how art is valued in society tends to vary wildly between each camp, with some saying that certain art is vastly over-valued, while others argue that art is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it. Either way, Beeple certainly has something to celebrate with this sale.
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Source: New York Times, Beeple