What’s Left of That Duct Taped Banana Worth $150000?
Making Sense of Art when Art Makes No Sense
When Maurizio Cattelan’s $150000 duct tape banana went viral at Art Basel Miami back in late 2019, my immediate impulse was to make fun of it — like every other person on the internet. Then the banana got eaten and taken down from the gallery wall because it became so uncontrollably popular. Well, it was the banana’s own fault if you ask me — it was practically asking for it, looking so delicious like that. Good riddance!
Cattelan has been obsessed with duct taping things since 1999, where the Italian artist taped his own art dealer to a gallery wall for an exhibition opening. But that event was supposedly “like a grotesque but not less striking crucifixion”. Well, that’s not really something we dare to call a yellow fruit shaped like a phallus, right?
I thought my rejection of this phallus of a fruit was the most righteous intellectual response any self-respecting feminist art lover would make. But then again, cynicism is the trademark of Cattelan’s art. The artist himself calls the viral banana “Comedian”, quite befitting the artist’s own brand as the “art-world joker”. Cattelan might remind you of Banksy, afterall they both went viral for doing some weird contemporary art stunts. But some critics aggressively invalidate Banksy as a “culturally irrelevant prankster” while defending Cattelan’s artistic legitimacy as an insider. Well, perhaps there is a certain truth to that. Many have compared Cattelan’s works to Marcel Duchamp, the original prankster star of the art world since Modernism. Others relate Cattelan’s practice to a jargon-y art historical movement called “institutional critique”, where art practitioners exposed and criticized problematic structures and social relations within museums and galleries using art itself as the weapon.
It’s ironic that somehow Cattelan is taken more seriously than Banksy simply because some critics consider him part of an art historical remnant. In reality, both artists deal with the irreverent and ephemeral conditions of art in our modern time. Like Banksy’s self-destructing painting, Cattelan’s banana would obviously never last very long either (even with duct tape on it). So what’s really left of the delicious fruit after it got eaten? As the lucky buyer, you get a meticulous set of instructions to reproduce the art piece. There’s also a few memes on social media testifying to this once hyped internet sensation. But perhaps what’s really left behind is a feeling of tragedy disguised in the comedy.
The banana reminds us that contemporary art is an industry, where artists, galleries and museums might just as well be business owners. When you peel off the layers of art, like a banana, there might be nothing more to it than a consumable commodity. This raises questions of production, labour and distribution of wealth. Who should really profit from this artwork — the banana farmers or the artist? Who truly owns the artwork — those who hold the instructions for its reproduction, or is it an “idea” incapable of being owned? These questions seem to be lost in the craze around Cattelan’s “Comedian”. In art fairs like Art Basel, money-driven agendas seem to dominate and threaten to replace all other meanings of art. There’s really nothing a banana nor an artist can do to miraculously change the situation. So what can you do instead? Well, maybe to just make fun of it all by never taking art seriously, neither as an artist nor as an art audience.
Cattelan’s duct taped banana might come to epitomize the angst of 21st Century artists who feel trapped in an industry that has lost sight of the meanings and values of art, where numbers came to represent its true worth: in market price, social media reach and attendance rates. That’s the real tragedy, a messy legacy we inherited from Modernism in a growingly “free” art market. Some might even compare this mess to the eaten banana’s physical remains which, as you know, has been through a human’s digestive system.
Wait, actually, you know what else is left of the banana? As digital prints on T-Shirts purchasable on the gallery that represents Cattelan. Now the artwork will be truly immortalized as a commodified merchandise. Long live the “Comedian”!
