The work caused a sensation when it debuted in 2019
Maurizio Cattelan‘s Comedian, which consists of the yellow fruit duct-taped to a wall, was just sold for US$6.2 million at Sotheby’s The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction (with an estimate of US$1 million and US$1.5 million made). The work broke the Internet when it debuted at Art Basel Miami in 2019, quickly causing everything from amusement to outrage among casual viewers and art world professionals alike.
The title of the work coupled with Cattelan’s reputation as a “trickster artist” and the prominent art fair where it was displayed suggest that Comedian was intended to provoke the public discourse it did. “What Cattelan is really doing is turning a mirror to the contemporary art world and asking questions, provoking thought about how we ascribe value to artworks, what we define as an artwork,” Sotheby’s head of contemporary art, David Galperin, told the Associated Press.
Anyone concerned with the perishable quality of the art won’t have to worry. “What you buy when you buy Cattelan’s Comedian is not the banana itself, but a certificate of authenticity that grants the owner the permission and authority to reproduce this banana and duct tape on their wall as an original artwork by Maurizio Cattelan,” Galperin said. All that to say, once purchased, any banana belonging to the buyer and hung exactly 63 inches from the floor becomes imbued with artistic status. (A previous edition of the artwork sold for US$150,000 in 2019.)
Though the artwork has been heavily memeified at this point, some experts believe the choice of a banana may have more serious implications than its critics seem ready to admit. Chloé Cooper Jones, an assistant professor at the Columbia University School of the Arts, told AP she thinks the work’s use of a banana could possibly speak to the undercurrents of excessive corporate power and imperialism that run through the blue-chip art market. The humble fruit may be ubiquitous, but it’s also a “simple symbol of global trade and all of its exploitations,” Cooper Jones says.
This story was first published on Robb Report USA. Featured photo by Han Haidan/Getty Images
