Would You Pay $1m for This Banana?

This is a banana duct-taped to the wall. It’s a real banana. You could go into a supermarket, buy such a banana, and tape it to the wall. But the chances are your version won’t go to auction for a potential $1 million. This one will. Here’s why.

This is a 2019 work titled Comedian by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. He created (so to speak) the piece for the Art Basel Miami Beach, purchasing the banana from a local grocery store then displaying it on the gallery walls. Two editions of the piece sold for $120,000 each at the Basel. At one point during its display, performance artist David Datuna ate the banana for what he called his own art piece, Hungry Artist. They replaced the banana.

Now, Comedian has an estimated value of between $1 million and $1.5 million according to Sotheby’s, where it is set to go on auction this week. According to the auction house’s head of contemporary art, David Galperin (via AP), the piece is important because the artist ‘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.

For the record, this is not the same banana that was on display in Miami in 2019. For obvious reasons, the fruit was replaced (and it will be regularly replaced for anyone who buys this piece.) Artists will get a certificate of authenticity to let them know that their banana is more important than others.

Maurizio Cattelan is a conceptual artist, but he’s also, it must be said, a total troll. He’s a proud sh*t stirrer whose works include a solid gold toilet (which was stolen and has never been recovered), an effigy of Pope John Paul II being crushed by a meteor, and a statue of a child-sized Hitler kneeling in prayer. He likes to aggravate people. Think of him as the Damien Hirst who didn’t go stale two decades ago. But like Hirst, he has sparked that canny ability to get very rich people to pay him exorbitant amounts of money for stuff that is most likely a joke against them. Like, come on, if you’re the one paying $1 million for the banana as a commentary on the ways we arbitrarily ascribe value to art based on hype and capitalism, you’re the one who’s being commentated on.

Of course, the art market is also kind of a scam. Rich people don’t buy art because they love it. They buy it for tax-related reasons and as a way to put their money into something tangible, only for them to hoard it from the world and treat the democratic beauty of art as a personal playground. Look at the list of the most expensive artworks sold at auction and you’ll see a lot of Qatari royals, Russian billionaires, and venture capitalist losers who 100% voted for Trump. So, frankly, the idea of these chumps putting down this obscene amount of money for some tape and a banana that has to be replaced before it rots is hilarious to me. It’s the rich creep equivalent of giving your money to the wallet inspector. Hey, at least it’s not an NFT. Yet.