A banana duct-taped to a white wall — or an acclaimed piece of art, depending on how you look at it — sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $6.24 million on Wednesday.
Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian” is comprised simply of a banana stuck to the wall with a strip of silver duct tape and is hung exactly 160 centimeters from the floor.
The artwork debuted at Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2019 and was initially estimated to sell around $1.5 million, according to Sotheby’s.
Art Basel quickly had to take the banana off the wall due to the crowds it drew, as it was prompt concern for the other featured artworks, art critic Nancy Durrant said in a Sotheby’s video about the piece of art.
It was the first art fair Cattelan was included in for 15 years, and it was the “announcement as a new original work by Maurizio Cattelan that captured the world’s attention immediately,” said David Galperin, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art for the Americas.
At one point, someone even took the banana off the wall and ate it.
Sotheby’s said the work “belongs to the rare league of artworks that need no introduction” as it “quickly erupted into a viral global sensation that drew record crowds, social media inundation, landed the cover of The New York Post, and divided viewers and critics alike.”
“Comedian” has been “passionately debated, rhapsodically venerated, and hotly contested,” according to Sotheby’s, as the piece of art made international headlines since its debut, “becoming the most talked-about artwork of the century.”
The debut of “Comedian,” caused commotion and true pandemonium, according to experts featured in the Sotheby’s video about the artwork.
It also made “a lot of people very angry,” Durrant said.
The response to the banana blew up online, as news outlets debated “whether this is art, whether it is a prank, whether it is a symbol of the excess of the art market,” Lucius Elliot, head of contemporary marquee sales at Sotheby’s, said in the video.
He added: “In truth, it is of course, all of those things.”
Cattelan’s sense of humor and use of comedy in his work — a fact that sets him apart as an artist, according to Durrant — is clear in “Comedian.”
Experts agreed that the artwork is meant to be funny, but also pokes at some holes in the art world, like the concept that modern art can be absurd.
For example, Cattelan “is presenting a work that mocks the very notion of art having this degree of value,” Elliot said, adding that while this is just a banana and duct tape, “it’s value is in its conceptual heft.”
“The important thing to know about Maurizio is that his jokes are serious and his serious work is funny,” Dodie Kazanjian, an editor for Vogue, said in the video, adding, “there’s something very deep in what Maurizio does, so the veneer of it might look like a banana, but there’s something else always at the core of what he’s saying.”
According to Sotheby’s, Cattelan “single-handedly prompted the world to reconsider how we define art, and the value we seek in it.”
Emmanuel Perrotin, founder of the Perrotin gallery where “Comedian” was first shown, said he called a client the day before the banana’s debut, offering the client a chance to buy the artwork at an undisclosed price. The client turned him down, but three days later, Perrotin got a message from someone offering to buy “Comedian” for seven times the price he initially offered to his client.
“Imagine the change of perception created by the way it was received by the audience,” Perrotin said.
As Galperin put it, “There is no better forum to adjudicate the value of art and a single object than the platform of auction.”