Hungary South Korean Student Eat Expansive "BANANA"

The $120,000 Art Basel Banana
You may have seen it on Twitter. On Instagram. Hell, on the cover of the New York Post: a ripe banana duct-taped to the wall, all in the name of art. (Or maybe you just heard a coworker talking about it, and now you’re frantically googling “duct tape banana.”) And now you want to learn more about it or at least understand the frenzy it’s caused over the last few days.

Well, you’ve come to the right place! Because since gazing upon the famed fruit at Galerie Perrotin’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach, I too became utterly fascinated by the banana. (When anyone texts me how the fair was, I don’t reply with words—just seven straight banana emojis.) So while art critics and scholars debate the banana’s status in the cultural canon, I took it upon myself to do a full-on banana breakdown, from the artwork’s background to its six-figure sale price and the art-on-art drama it caused on Saturday. Buckle up, folks.Art Basel Banana is catchy, but it’s not actually the work’s name. Titled Comedian, it’s by Maurizio Cattelan. Cattelan is an Italian artist and an absurdist—in 2016 he replaced a toilet at the Guggenheim with a fully functioning gold one. He called the artwork America.es, anyone with basic motor skills can tape a banana to the wall. But this is conceptual art. So let’s consider the concept. “Back then, Cattelan was thinking of a sculpture that was shaped like a banana,” a statement from the gallery read, via CNN. “Every time he traveled, he brought a banana with him and hung it in his hotel room to find inspiration. He made several models: first in resin, then in bronze, and in painted bronze (before) finally coming back to the initial idea of a real banana.”

Duchampian in nature, the ridiculousness of the whole thing is perhaps what it’s all about. There’s a reason it’s called Comedian, after all, a vaudeville reference to slipping on a peel. “The genius of Cattelan’s banana is that it draws out the mainstream media’s suspicion that all contemporary art is a type of emperor’s new clothes foisted on rich people,” Half Gallery owner and art dealer Bill Powers told me when we saw that work together at Basel. “Was it Warhol who said, ‘Art is whatever you can get away with’? Case in point.”Whether this qualifies as art, well, that’s up to you! Art is subjective.

Did anyone buy it?

Yes—three buyers, in fact. It’s reported two editions went for $120,000 before the price was raised to $150,000.

How could three people buy the banana?

In this case, you aren’t actually buying the work itself—it’s a banana. It’s going to rot. What are you buying, then? The certificate of art. Essentially you bought the idea rather than the object.

When the banana goes bad, the owner can replace it, according to the artist’s instructions. It will still be considered a Cattelan.

Wait, $120,000?!

Yep. Low whistle. The price tag—paired with the work’s absurdity—got the attention of social media. And also the press: The New York Post put in on the cover with the headline “Bananas! Art world gone mad—this duct-taped fruit sold for $120K.”

That’s a lot of attention.

Yeah. Soon insane crowds formed in front of Comedian. Security got involved, and official queues were set up. People were just going...bananas.