Final evening, November 20, Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian” (2019), a piece that consists of a banana duct-taped to a wall, offered for $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s public sale.
That is improper.
It’s past improper. It’s obscene and immoral. It’s the ugliest show of extra I’ve seen in a very long time.
I’m not naive. As an editor at an artwork publication, I acknowledge the ability of spectacle, and I’ve coated a number of gimmicky, record-shattering public sale gross sales.
However that didn’t cease my blood from boiling as I watched the bidding climb quickly to about six instances the unique estimate. I wasn’t anticipating it, however I felt sick to my abdomen.
The billionaire who purchased the banana, crypto investor Justin Solar, could have additionally felt one thing in his abdomen as he threw out bid after bid. Possibly it was the distant echo of a ravenous youngster’s growling abdomen.
When it first appeared on the partitions of Artwork Basel Miami Seaside in 2019, “Comedian” was hailed as a superb critique of the artwork market’s grotesque detachment from any financial rhyme or cause, not to mention creative advantage. However I don’t assume Cattelan’s “prank” was ever in good religion. The Italian artist swims in the identical swamp as these he pretends to parody. The murkier the waters, the extra they thrive.
It’s solely becoming that the mundane banana was purchased by a crypto bro who additionally conjured his fortune out of skinny air. However the second the work turned a private funding asset, it misplaced any shred of irony it might need as soon as possessed. “Comedian” has turn into value greater than the artworks whose market Cattelan pretended to lampoon by taping up the fruit at an artwork truthful. The snake has eaten its tail. The masks has turn into the face. The jester has turn into the king.
Hakim Bishara is a Senior Editor at Hyperallergic. He’s a recipient of the 2019 Andy Warhol Basis and Inventive Capital Arts Writers Grant and he holds an MFA in Artwork Writing from the Faculty of Visible…
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