Art gone bananas? — Meme culture’s entrance into high culture
Rather, how the pretentious curators of the Basel and Frieze galleries are left with no choice but to pick from pop culture’s memetic buffet
Art about bananas. Art is going bananas. Art has gone bananas. Oh what a familiar refrain — “art is no longer valued for its aesthetic value, it makes no sense” says the outsider. “You philistine, art is valuable for it represents a concept, an idea, a commentary, of which you are too infantile or uninitiated to realise” the commodore of pretension claps back.
Comedian at the Art Basel gallery in Miami (2019) is the latest episode in the pantheon of expensive art-pieces that are designed to boldly comment on established conventions in the art-world and provoke shock-and-terror amongst the uninitiated. The Basel Banana, along with it’s £100K+ price-tag has a dual objective as an art-piece and as a viral news-story. It can be placed squarely within meme culture — an artistic statement which grows in value through its evolving interaction and usage by a specific community and the public.
