Italian visual artist Maurizio Cattelan’s duct-taped Banana entitled “Comedian,” is on display during a media preview at Sotheby’s in New York, on 8 November, 2024.
Photo: AFP / Ken Betancur
A banana fixed to a wall with duct tape is once again grabbing headlines as it is set to sell for up to US$1.5 million (NZ$2.5m) when it goes to auction this week at Sotheby’s in New York.
Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian artwork first caused an uproar five years ago, when it debuted as an edition of three fruits at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair.
Several editions – or bananas – have since gone on display of the work around the world. Three of which sold for between US$120,000 and US$150,000, according to Perrotin gallery.
But the infamous banana has also been gobbled up twice so far – once at the time of its launch at Art Basel by a performance artist’s intervention, which he called ‘Hungry Artist’, and in 2023 at Leeum Museum of Art by a student who claimed he was simply hungry.
Auckland-based art dealer Charles Ninow believes the aptly-named Comedian is intended to make people feel a bit confronted by how we define and place value on art.
“If we think about the time when the banana was sold, 2019, it had been 15 years since Cattelan had shown an artwork and an art fair context,” Ninow tells Nights host Emile Donovan.
“And if you think about what was happening at that time, there was a phenomenon – they call it the wet painting in the art world, which is a painting that’s so new, it’s being resold so quickly that it might still be wet.
“A year later, NFT [non-fungible tokens] started to happen.”
NFTs are assets, which can also be art, that have been tokenised via a blockchain.
Cattelan is known for drawing attention to “structures that govern the way that art works, that culture works, that politics work”, Ninow says.
“The whole thing about this work is that is that it falls into a tradition or an understanding called the ready-made where it’s all about the idea, the actual object doesn’t mean anything.
“The other thing is it leaves you questioning, right? It doesn’t tell you everything. And I think that’s one of the important things about it. You have to ask your own questions.”
Some of his other well-known works include America, consisting of a solid gold toilet, and La Nona Hora (The Ninth Hour), which depicts Pope John II lying on the ground after being struck by a meteorite.
In a press release, Sotheby’s called Cattelan’s works “revolutionary”, saying they “shared in a spirit of iconoclastic pranksterism that provoked audiences to question the meaning of art”.
“To me, Comedian was not a joke; it was a sincere commentary and a reflection on what we value,” he told The Art Newspaper. “At art fairs, speed and business reign, so I saw it like this: if I had to be at a fair, I could sell a banana like others sell their paintings. I could play within the system, but with my rules.
“When art makes us feel something and puts us in a position of discomfort, that’s when it has an impact.”
Comedian will be up for sale at Sotheby’s in New York on 20 November. But the successful bidder will get their own banana, a roll of duct tape, a certificate of authenticity and instructions on how to install the work, according to The Guardian.