A Banana Sells For $6.2 Million And The World Goes...Well, Bananas
Think How Many Bananas $6.2 M Could Actually Buy, People Wonder, Not Having The Faintest Idea What That Number Would Be**
Finally, the rarified art world got our attention. Enough is enough.
Surprisingly it wasn’t a $450.3 million da Vinci. It wasn’t for a $200 million Jackson Pollock or a $300 million de Kooning. No, those artists are still considered exalted, their artwork still deserving of their stratospheric prices.
Nope. It was for a mere $6.2 million…for Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian. A single banana taped to a wall. That made fun of the art market. Bought by a crypto bro. From China. The world is getting so interesting, isn’t it? Interesting, as in really weird…
Well all I can say is, hallelujah! It’s a start. Outrage from art market insiders, artists, and non artists alike agree: It’s too much, as in too much money for a piece of art. (Yes, it is art, and more on that later.)
It’s a start. Could we dream? Maybe someday we’ll see actual outrage turn into action and not just lip service over, say, a $70 million contract for someone to throw a baseball. Or the likes of the $37.5 million Fox Sports is going to pay Tom Brady every year for the next ten years just to talk on television about football.
I have an idea! Let’s duct tape Tom Brady to a wall and see the reaction. Maybe that’s all it takes. Just stick him up there and see what happens.
Because the banana is edible, people are quick to make comparisons about how many people could be fed with $6.2 million.
Fill in the name of your favorite pop star/athlete/television personality/movie star: Think of all of the people they could feed, the children they could clothe, the stray cats they could neuter.
I’ve got news for you: Most super rich people aren’t interested in doing any of that. They’re interested in one thing, and one thing only: Massaging their already overblown egos. It’s a way of pleasuring themselves. Power. Prestige. Social standing. That’s what their interested in.
In many ways they’re basically one-cell animals, just with a lot of money. Don’t try to understand it. They’re not like us.
But lest we allow any of the suspects slip through our net of righteous indignation, the usually intelligent and erudite online arts publication, Hyperallergic, fired an editorial across the artist’s bow claiming that Maurizio Cattelan “…swims in the same swamp as those he pretends to parody.” Ouch!
Is the art market really being compared to Trump’s swamp, the one he keeps saying he’ll drain, but it somehow keeps overflowing like the only toilet in a frat house on a Friday night? You said it, not me.
But hey! Stop picking on the artist. He was just doing his job.
Save it for the people who caused and perpetuated all this obscenity: mega dealers, auction houses, MFA programs, art critics and reviewers who turned a blind eye to the prices since they enjoy the occasional dip in the swamp themselves, and collectors whose only knowledge or appreciation of art is based on a price tag.
And come on! Lighten up! It’s a joke. The banana is poking a finger in the eye of the art market. And you got to admit, it keeps proving its point.
It was a joke in 2019 when it was first exhibited at Art Basel Miami Beach, where three bananas were sold for a mere $120,000 each.
And it continues to be a joke, probably even more so today although maybe it’s also a bit sobering with crypto investor Justin Sun who, with all the sophistication and experience of a Trump cabinet appointee or the tastefulness of a Melania Trump Christmas party, flexed his financial guns. Sun claims he’s going to eat the banana “…as part of this unique artistic experience…”
Don’t the super rich just make you want to spit? It seems the one thing today’s oligarchs have in common is that they’re all so uncouth.
And by the way, Cattelan doesn’t see a penny of the sale.
Comedian is right in line with Cattelan’s other work. He’s been taping things to walls for years. He once duct-taped his art dealer to a wall.
Another time he hung a stuffed horse from a ceiling.
Then there’s Cattelan’s La Nona Ora. That’s a sculpture of Pope John Paul II after being hit by a meteorite. It upends centuries of religious art and I for one think it’s about time.
Comedian is funny. It’s especially funny to people like me who think some people take themselves way too damn seriously. Like artists. Artists as a group take themselves way too seriously.
Yes, art is serious. But so’s comedy. And for some reason, if a piece of artwork shows any hint of levity, it’s deemed gauche.
Cattelan is consistently described in the art press as a “prankster”. OK, sure, if you say so.
What he really is, is a conceptual artist. There’s always a big idea behind the work of a really good conceptual artist, which is one reason why so many people love them, and also why so many people loathe them. It’s either your cup of tea, or it isn’t.
Personally, I think conceptual art is an acquired taste. Kind of like Marx Brother’s movies, the Three Stooges, or Quentin Tarrantino.
Here’s the thing: People keep focusing on the banana, but it’s not just a banana. For his $6.2 million, Sun bought a banana, an entire roll of duct tape, and a very detailed set of instructions on how to display the artwork.
And what’s probably most important to him, he bought the notoriety; he bought the meme. Basically he was stroking his ego to the tune of $6.2 million.
If you think Comedian is worth $6.2 million, who am I to disagree? At least that’s what it seems Sotheby’s in New York, the auction house selling Comedian, was saying the other night. It must have been a strange vibe in that room, as the bids kept mounting on a piece of artwork that was making fun of the bidders. Taunting them to raise their bids. The higher the bids, the more serious the banana became.
Personally, of course I think the price is vulgar. But I also think the price of just about every major piece of artwork is vulgar. I think it’s vulgar that the wealthy use art as a tax shelter. I think it’s vulgar that museums charge $30 or more for admission per person per day (making it over $100 for a family of four) when entry should be as free as a library to see culture that belongs to us all. I think the exorbitant prices of tuition of MFA programs are vulgar. I could go on. The art market, at its very base, is vulgar.
Why Comedian is the straw that if not broke, at least cracked, the camel’s back is beyond me. Maybe it had something to do with the U.S. presidential election. Maybe people are starting to think, whoa, maybe we have gone too far. Maybe we should pull it back a bit. If that’s the case, Cattelan, the prankster, has done his work.
** At 35¢ each, you could buy 2,170,000 bananas
Why John has done here goes far beyond just ‘peeling the banana,’ he turns it upside down and inside out leaving us the skins to chew on. And thankfully so! We need more candid writing like this— writing that comes from pragmatism of the unjaded, lived, creatively adept who at IN IT rather than puffery from all those Watching It, like a hedge funder sitting on a candle chart waiting to jump in the market. Because those writers and reviewers? They KNOW they influence the market and value as well! Voyeurs? No. Manipulators? YES.