The wild, weird, wonderful thing about art is that it is forever evolving, pushing limits. Being an artist now doesn’t necessarily mean sitting with an easel and palette on the banks of the Seine. Now art can mean creating with sand or carving pumpkins or painting with beer. Even payment methods are changing for artists.

Enter Beeple. Aka Beeple Crap. Aka Mike Winkelmann. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because his digital piece, Everydays- The First 5000 Days just sold at Christie’s for $69 million dollars.

Sixty-nine million dollars.

69K.

No matter how I type it, it’s a cryptoload of money. To put it in perspective, Twitter sold on Monday for 2.9 million dollars as an NFT.

Beeple is an NFT artist. The Paris Salon probably would have labeled him “newfangled” and moved on, but let’s be a little more open-minded than Salon members (they shunned Impressionism, for pity’s sake!) and slow our roll. NFT is a type of digital ownership. It stands for non-fungible tokens, which does not mean fungus-free tokens, contrary to popular belief. It’s (very) basically a kind of currency tied to assets that can be traded, bought, or sold. It’s blowing up the art world because it means more artists are getting paid! Art majors everywhere are squashing their parents’ argument that, “You’ll never make a living doing art.”

NFTs aren’t the only crazy new development in art. Sophia is making a name for herself as a talented artist. Inasmuch as robots can be talented, I suppose. She’s been interviewed on the Today Show, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and by Will Smith. Not even Da Vinci can claim those bragging rights. Sophia just celebrated her fifth birthday (she ages very well, FYI) but I just recently learned about her propensity for art. Incidentally, one of her paintings is up for sale for the first time ever today (also as an NFT). Watch this video and tell me what you think.

It’s lovely art, that’s for certain. But call me old-fashioned, I’m most impressed with artists who have a full scalp. No ifs, ands, or robots about it.