An Artwork I’m Not Sure About

Beeple animation

This week I saw this short video artwork on Instagram by the digital artist Beeple. You might have heard of Beeple because he made a name for himself in March 2021 when the auction house Christie’s sold an NFT by him for $69 million. It was a collage of 5000 graphic images Beeple had created, and he called it Everydays: The First 5000 Days:

I have struggled with Beeple’s work because, like a lot of crypto art, I find it completely banal. His images and videos often respond to current affairs or pop culture, and they are typically set in futuristic landscapes. This is an example, it’s an image of the actor Tom Hanks in a fight with coronavirus:

But there’s no denying that Beeple has created ripples in the art world, and up until now I’ve parked him and thought ‘I need to figure out what I think about him at some stage’. And actually I think this video is that moment, because I found myself watching it over and over again trying to figure…