Sotheby’s to Sell a Taped Banana

Last night, Sotheby’s put satirist Maurizio Cattelan’s viral art piece titled Comedian — which is simply a fresh yellow banana duct-taped to a white wall — and it sold for a whopping $6.2 million.

Fresh Take: The bunches of money that Comedian sold for show that the stunt-art market is alive and well. Like Banksy triggering his painting to shred after its purchase or MSCHF’s growing roster of high-class jokes, Cattelan’s no-effort piece of brilliance demonstrates that what people (well, very, very wealthy people) really pay for is to be part of a one-of-a-kind cultural moment.

Behind the Peel: Comedian, which debuted as five bananas in 2019, each sold between $120,000 and $150,000 at Art Basel Miami… and it’s only grown in value.

(Yes, this is objectively hilarious.)

• The artwork sold to Justin Son, the founder of crypto platform Tron, for $6.2 million (which he will pay in crypto, of course). He plans to eat the banana to honor “its place in both art history and popular culture.”
• The banana comes with a 14-page instruction bullet for maintaining the work’s integrity… like, if the banana goes rotten, tape a new banana (that you have to purchase yourself) vertically and with the curve pointing right.
• And just in case someone tried to heist the banana — i.e., take it off the wall and eat it — the auction house has backups.

Final Bid: Sotheby’s has rolled out the red carpet for this banana, touring it in nine cities, including Tokyo and Dubai, setting up the fruit in its own room, and emblazoning it on merch. That’s because the banana is a hit — a version is even on loan to NYC’s respected Guggenheim Museum (they haven’t taped it up yet). Considering the ridiculous purchase price — grocery inflation be damned — a new post-post-modern art movement may be peeling.

Go Bananas: Michael Bouhanna, Sotheby’s head of digital art and NFTs, independently launched a crypto based on Comedian that now has a market cap of $330 million. Very silly, very suspicious.