Maurizio Cattelan’s artwork ‘Comedian’ comprises a banana duct-taped to a wall and was by the Italian artist’s account intended to be a send-up, to highlight the absurdity of the art-world and how value is ascribed. Cattelan’s work is darkly humorous and deliberately provocative. His tongue in cheek attitude and use of everyday symbolism and materials has been likened to Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol.
‘Comedian’ made its debut at Art Basel Miami in 2019. It was sold as three editions first and second for $120,000 and the third for $150,000. It was Cattelan’s first new work at an art fair in 15 years. So while satirical ‘Comedian’ was a big commercial success.
During the art fair, David Datuna, a performance and installation artist, took the banana off the wall and ate it. The action drew mixed reactions from the crowd. Datuna said “Like the gallery said, it’s not a banana, it’s a concept. And I just ate the concept of the artist. So I think this is cool, this is fun, this is what art is about.” He also added, “I call the performance, ‘Hungry Artist,’ because I was hungry and I just ate it.” Perrotin Gallery then removed it from display, the gallery to this day also run an Instagram account that shares memes about ‘Comedian‘.
The work itself and then Datuna’s action (watch it here) generated a wave of international press and intrigue from the public, the work went on to be displayed at the UCCA in Beijing and the Palazzo Bonaparte in Rome. Clearly the way an audience reacts to an artwork gives it life.
In 2020 the Guggenheim Museum in New York acquired an edition of ‘Comedian’ through an anonymous donation. The Guggenheim would not have literally been gifted a piece of fruit but instead, the certificate of authenticity that gives them the right to recreate the work and apparently 14 pages of instructions on how to. For example, the banana should be hung 75cm above ground and replaced every 7 to 10 days. The museum writes of Cattelan ‘Cattelan, who has no formal training and considers himself an “art worker” rather than an artist, has often been characterized as the court jester of the art world. This label speaks not only to his taste for irreverence and the absurd, but also his profound interrogation of socially ingrained norms and hierarchies, subjects historically only available to the court fool.’
In 2023 the banana was eaten again this time by a student while it was on display at Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art. Noh Huyn-soo explained ‘It was reported in the press that my banana eating was an act of rebellion or that I was hungry. I think it’s up to the public to decide on that. Some people see my banana eating as simply vandalism. Others say it was done for publicity – and I agree.’ After he ate the banana he taped the peel back onto the wall. The artwork was later replenished with a new banana. In these instances there’s no record of Maurizio Cattelan expressing displeasure at the interactions with his work, other than ‘No problem at all’ as Noh Huyn-soo suggested he said.
That same year the artwork came to Australia to Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria for their NGV Triennial. The gallery said ‘Comedian might be seen as a commentary on the arbitrary and capricious nature of the art market, where value is often ‘ascribed’ based on an artist’s reputation or a prevalent trend. Similarly, the work could be a commentary on how society attributes value to certain objects, turning them into commodities. A humble banana is transformed and elevated by its placement in an art context. The work reminds us that art doesn’t need to be complex to be meaningful or valuable. ‘Comedian’ could be a return to basics in a hyper-consumerist world.’
The NGV also shared that Cattelan had said ‘‘Comedian’ is exactly like an apple for Cézanne: the minimum common denominator that everybody recognises. But you need to alter its condition. Cézanne does it with brush strokes, I do it with gaffer tape.’
Now in 2024 the work has sold again at auction, from a private vendor, for $6.2 million (including fees) to Justin Sun. You can watch a short film which was released before the auction, promoting the artist’s genius and about ‘the banana that broke the internet’, by Sotheby’s below.
Sotheby’s wall text read ‘Cattelan’s Comedian represents the apex of a 100-year-long intellectual yet irreverent interrogation of contemporary art’s limits.’ The auction house also asserted that cryptocurrency would be accepted as payment for this lot, reported Vanity Fair. The buyer, Sun, is the founder of a cryptocurrency. It’s been reported Sun was in the running to acquire Beeple’s NFT artwork ‘Everydays – The First 5000 Days’ a few years ago, so he’s no stranger to considering the value of art as more than its materiality. Indeed Sun has said since to the Art Newspaper that ‘Most of the value of the artwork comes from the internet rather than the artwork itself.’ In another statement Sun said ‘This is not just an artwork; it represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community.’ Since acquiring ‘Comedian’, Sun ate the banana.
Cattelan and the world clearly find ‘Comedian’ funny. So, who’s the joke on? The New York Times reported that when Shah Alam, a fruit vendor who sold the banana for 25 cents, was told it traded for $6.2 million, he cried.
The silver lining could be, as Artnet shares that a GoFundMe for Alam has been created and organisations combatting hunger have set up protests outside of Sotheby’s.