It’s a rare occasion when an independent animator and cg artist appears on a late night talk show, but Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple, isn’t your average animator.
His latest piece, “Human One,” an animated installation conceived as a nonfungible token (NFT), sold for $29 million last week at a Christie’s auction. His earlier NFT, a collage of his work called “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” sold earlier this year for $69 million. The prices of these pieces place him among the most successful living artists, including Jasper Johns, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, and David Hockney.
The success of these NFTs also landed him an appearance last week on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon where he discussed how he went from earning next to nothing for his artwork to becoming an art world superstar: