Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s notorious installation involving a banana duct-taped to a wall is once again putting the slippery value of art in the spotlight.
This month, international auction house Sotheby’s will put one of the artwork’s three editions up for sale in New York, with an estimated price of between US$1m and US$1.5m. The successful bidder will receive a banana, a roll of duct tape, a certificate of authenticity and instructions on how to install the work.
Cattelan’s work, titled Comedian, debuted at Art Basel Miami fair in 2019 as an edition of three, where its US$120,000 price tag made headlines worldwide and prompted debate about the nature of art and its value – only fuelled by the artist’s admission that he purchased the banana from a Miami grocery for around 30 cents.
The banana drama went viral when New York performance artist David Datuna removed and ate the banana, which was then replaced.
In May 2023, the work again hit the news, after a South Korean art student repeated Datuna’s stunt, removing and eating the banana from an edition of Comedian that was on display in Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art.
In late 2023, an edition of Comedian went on display at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne as part of their Triennial exhibition – without mishap.
Sotheby’s hasn’t disclosed the source of the edition being auctioned, but said the current owner acquired it from the collection of one of the original buyers.
In their catalogue note, the auction house describes Comedian as a “masterpiece” that “single-handedly prompted the world to reconsider how we define art, and the value we seek in it”. It compares the work to Jeff Koons’ three-edition sculpture Rabbit (which broke records for sales by a living artist when an edition sold for US$91.1m in May 2019) and Andy Warhol’s series of screen-print paintings of Marilyn Monroe, “both of which literally and metaphorically held the mirror to the face of contemporary art”.
Cattelan has form when it comes to cheeky, provocative work: in 2016, he installed a solid gold, fully functioning toilet at the Guggenheim and called it America; in 1999 he duct-taped his art dealer to a wall for the opening of his exhibition A Perfect Day. For an earlier exhibition, he convinced his French dealer to dress in a phallic bunny costume.
Weighing in on Comedian in 2019, Guardian’s art critic Jonathan Jones said: “Cattelan’s toilet mocked the money-obsessed art world by being potentially more valuable for its raw material than its concept – reflecting a market that can turn shit to gold. His banana makes the same joke the other way round by being glaringly not worth its asking price.”
Cattelan himself has said that the work “was not a joke”, telling the Art Newspaper: “It was a sincere commentary and a reflection on what we value. 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.”
Comedian will be up for sale at Sotheby’s contemporary evening art auction in New York on 20 November.
