There's probably a good chance that you heard the news that BEEPLE, the graphic artist born as Mike Winkelmann, had just sold the third most expensive piece of artwork for a living artist and thought to yourself, "WTF is a BEEPLE?" Or if you were me you said just a plain "WTF?"  Sure, you probably knew a little bit about NFTs (Winkelmann had only just started working with NFTs in October 2020), but the fact that someone had paid $69,346,250 on March 11, 2021 for his work  Everydays: the First 5000 Days, the massive JPEG collage of images from his Everydays series, kind of felt like either a game-changer, an insane hedge, a turning point, a blip, a hero moment, an insider moment, a gross use of money or a smart investment of someone who saw a landmark moment in digital art.

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Whatever it was, you had a reaction. Many were mad. Many in the establishment almost cried out that it was the end of art as we know it. To be honest, it all felt a little silly. Everyone ran to NFTs for some of that million dollar energy, and some of it worked, some didn't. Winkelmann himself was new to the platform of selling his images this way, but had already accumulated a massive audience for this Everydays series, creating a digital work and posting it everyday since 2007. Regardless of what the market did, of what his impact on NFTs has been just in a few short months, Winkelmann just makes art everyday. It's kind of his thing.

On this episode of Radio Juxtapoz, we talked to BEEPLE about just that: making art everyday. We of course talk about the landmark auction and his thoughts on NFTs and his quite interesting advice to everyone joining the medium. We talk about the sudden criticism, what the media seems to have surmized about him from this sale, and what it means to have an audience before the wider public knew BEEPLE. He gives his insights about how artists will help make NFTs more environmentally friendly just through their desire and awareness that it needs to change. But like any disrupter of the art market and art consciousness, we just wanted to talk to BEEPLE about his craft, practice, humor and where he thinks this is all going. 


The Radio Juxtapoz podcast is hosted by FIFTH WALL TV's Doug Gillen and Juxtapoz editor, Evan Pricco. Episode 071 was recorded via Skype in London, San Francisco and Charleston on April 16, 2021. Follow us on @radiojuxtapoz