Again-to-back typhoons are ripping by means of villages, humanitarian crises are raging, and New York Metropolis is so dry it’s burning — however tonight, November 20, within the cocooned bubble of a Sotheby’s salesroom on the Higher East Aspect, a banana has simply bought for $6.2 million.
This was not simply any banana, in fact, however relatively one chosen for artist Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comic” (2019), his notoriously sparse paintings that includes the yellow fruit duct-taped to a white wall. However very like our hopes and goals, this banana will ultimately rot, and it should be switched out with a recent one (“the banana and duct tape may be changed as wanted,” a Sotheby’s consultant defined). And at that time, it actually will simply be any banana — with its smooth and mushy inside, its inevitable patch of brown spots, and its loaded legacy of colonialism and exploitation.
Dutifully, I inquired a few press ticket to attend the sale and witness the pageantry within the flesh. A Sotheby’s spokesperson politely declined because of “capability constraints,” and as a comfort, she supplied to ship a bottle of Sotheby’s signature champagne to take pleasure in as I “expertise the public sale from the consolation of residence.” The psychological picture of me popping the cork of my public sale house-branded bubbly from my sofa on a Wednesday night time whereas streaming the sale on my growing old MacBook was so hilariously anticlimactic that I briefly thought of reside running a blog it à la Drunk Historical past.
Ultimately, although, I made a decision the factor simply wasn’t going to be that thrilling, and I used to be largely proper. Lot 10, Cattelan’s “Comic” got here up round 7:26pm, smack dab between one among Richard Prince’s Nurse work and a Nineteen Seventies Suzanne Jackson canvas so painfully stunning it added insult to damage. Following auctioneer Oliver Barker’s nervous introduction (“Not fairly certain what to anticipate right here”), a rhythmic volley ensued between a number of bidders on the telephones, a paddle within the room, and an bold on-line bidder. Six minutes later, the hammer lastly plopped down at $5.2 million ($6,240,000, with the home’s charges) because of a telephone bidder with Jen Hua, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Asia. It was the one work within the sale that’s eligible for cost in cryptocurrencies, and two cash impressed by the work — the Solana-based “Banana Tape Wall” ($BTW) and a token known as $BAN began by a Sotheby’s worker — are in hundreds of digital “wallets.” That ought to let you know all it is advisable to know concerning the bro vitality surrounding this public sale.
“Comic” made its debut at Artwork Basel Miami Seashore in 2019, the place Perrotin Gallery reportedly bought three editions of the work for between $120,000 and $150,000 every; one among these was later donated to the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The version that went underneath the hammer tonight was the second within the sequence, which additionally consists of two artist’s proofs. A provenance part underneath the lot description on Sotheby’s web site notes that the work modified arms 3 times: first when it was initially bought by a non-public collector on the honest, then when it was acquired by the worldwide gallery White Dice, and as soon as extra when it was purchased by its most up-to-date proprietor, Sotheby’s consignor. That’s proper: Over a interval of 5 years, three consumers paid what I can solely assume have been mounting costs for the rights to tape a banana to a wall and name it Artwork, and every of them in the end determined that they didn’t need it. (White Dice has not but responded to a request for remark.)
However each banana has its day, and the PR machine has largely efficiently albeit shamelessly couched “Comic” in a lineage of irreverent conceptualism that Sotheby’s catalog essay traces again to Édouard Manet’s “Olympia” (1863) and Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” (1917). The work “sits firmly on the head of an artwork historic corridor of infamy alongside the renegade minds who made controversy, jest, and ideological rupture a part of the material of up to date artwork,” the essay reads, seemingly utilizing as many phrases as attainable with out a trace of perceptible irony. One may as an alternative supply commentary right here on the banana’s standing as one of many world’s most important crops, as an emblem of United Fruit Firm’s disastrous insurance policies in Central America, and as a permanent illustration of ongoing labor violations, as explored in initiatives like Blanca Serrano and Juanita Solano’s 2022 digital exhibition La Fiebre del Banano / Banana Craze.
However what if “Comic” is what all of us deep down realize it to be — a solipsistic assertion, an overpriced fruit, a foul paintings that doesn’t even rise to the satisfying punch of a gimmick? Very like poorly executed art-world satire that secretly relishes in what it purports to critique, Cattelan’s piece isn’t holding up a mirror to something. Tonight’s prime bidder didn’t purchase a chunk of historical past — they purchased a banana and a roll of tape, and they need to know higher.