A banana stuck to a white wall – or an acclaimed piece of art, depending on how you look at it – sold for $US6.24 million ($AU9.57 million) at a Sotheby’s auction on Wednesday.
Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian is simply a banana stuck to the wall with a strip of silver duct tape at a distance of exactly 160 centimeters from the floor.
The artwork debuted at Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2019 and was initially estimated to sell for $1.5 million, according to Sotheby’s.
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Art critic Nancy Durant said in a Sotheby’s video about the art piece that Art Basel had to immediately remove the banana from the wall due to the crowd, as it was causing concern for other featured artworks.
It was the first art fair to include Cattelan for 15 years, and it was “the announcement as a new original work by Maurizio Cattelan that immediately caught the world’s attention,” said David, head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s of America. Galperin said.
Once someone took a banana off the wall and ate it.
Sotheby’s said the work “belongs to that rare category of artworks that needs no introduction,” as it “quickly turned into a viral global sensation, attracting record crowds, flooding social media. , reached the cover of The New York Post, and divided audiences and critics alike.” According to Sotheby’s, The Comedian was “passionately debated, highly regarded, and hotly contested” as it made international headlines, “becoming the most talked-about artwork of the century.”
According to experts featured in Sotheby’s video about the artwork, The Comedian’s debut caused an uproar and true bewilderment.
“It made a lot of people very angry,” Durant said.
The reaction to the banana created a stir online, as news outlets debated “is it art, is it a prank, is it symbolic of the excesses of the art market,” said Lucius Elliott, head of contemporary marquee sales at Sotheby’s. Said in the video.
He added: “Really, of course, it’s all of those things.”
Cattelan’s sense of humor and use of comedy in his work – which sets him apart as a performer – is evident in Comedians, Durant said.
Experts agreed that the artwork is funny, but said it also pokes at some holes in the art world, such as the concept that modern art can be absurd.
For example, Cattelan is “presenting a work that mocks the notion of art having this level of value,” Elliott said, adding that while it is just a banana and duct tape, “its value is in its conceptual height. “
“The important thing to know about Maurizio is that his jokes are serious and his serious work is funny,” Vogue editor Dodi Kazanjian said in the video. He added, “There’s something very deep about what Maurizio does, so on the surface it may seem banal, but there’s always something more at the core of what he’s saying.”
According to Sotheby’s, Cattelan “has single-handedly inspired the world to rethink how we define art, and what value we find in it.”
Emmanuel Perrotin, founder of Perrotin, the gallery where the Comedian was first shown, said that he phoned a customer the day before Bananas’ debut and offered the customer the chance to purchase the artwork for an undisclosed price. The client rejected him, but three days later, Perrotin received a message from someone offering to buy the comedian for seven times the price initially offered to his client.
“Imagine the change in perception created by the way it was received by the audience,” Perrotin said.
As Galperin said, “There is no better forum for judging the value of art and an individual object than the auction platform.”
