Banana market or art? A 6.2 million Cattelan
The installation won at Sotheby's auction over estimates by China's Justin Sun. In 2019 it had made a lot of noise at ArtBasel Miami
3' min read
3' min read
On the evening of 20 November in New York, Maurizio Cattelan's 'Comedian' lot, one of three editions of a banana attached to the wall by a piece of industrial duct tape that debuted in 2019 at the Perrotin Gallery booth at the ArtBasel Miami fair, where it had first sold for $120,000, was long contended to realise $5.2 million from an estimate secured by auction house Sotheby's of $1-1.5m, which becomes $6.2m with commissions. The artist's record-breaking 'Him' (2001) sculpture of Hitler kneeling in prayer (ed. of 3) traded at auction in 2016 at Christie's New York for the hammer price of 15,200,000 remains unbeaten. However, it is still a long road for Cattelan to reverse the course of his under-the-hammer prices, which have lost -45.9 per cent since 2002.
Cryptocurrencies and art
.As was easy to predict since Sotheby's announced that it also agreed to settle payments in 'cryptocurrency', the buyer comes from the world of blockchain enthusiasts: it is the Chinese Justin Sun. We can speculate that the new owner will make it a form of investment for third parties in the form of NFTs or similar, given the new impetus to these forms of betting following the election of Trump and Musk. It is all in all a fair exchange: non-existent currency pays for a lot that has only the banana in it.
The episode perfectly renders the state the contemporary art world has reached, which rewards a sensationalism good for ticktock and Instagram, a product ready for financial speculation through the elimination of the work itself.
For the serious artists who still exist and perhaps try to contextualise the banana symbol within the absurd evolution of the world economy, the message is clear and depressing: a joke is worth more than any reasoning. And the credibility of the market, even in the eyes of the general public, is shattered.
The auctioneer spent the minutes waiting between bids on the phone cramming in banana jokes that in the context of a Minions film would have been hilarious; long gone are the days of Sotheby's historic auctioneer Peter Wilson who invented the first 'black-tie' auction-event in 1958. And of when the Guggenheim bought paintings instead of bananas.
