Why a duct-taped banana sold for millions of dollars

Would you buy a banana for millions of dollars?

Justin Sun, a Chinese collector and founder of the cryptocurrency platform TRON, just did. He was the winning bidder on an artwork by Italian-born artist Maurizio Cattelan titled "Comedian" at a Sotheby's auction on Wednesday, which he acquired for $6.2 million (€6.5 million) — far exceeding the auction house's estimates of $1-1.5 million.

No, it's not a banana made of solid gold; it's your regular old edible banana affixed to the wall with a piece of duct tape.

After the auction, Sun immediately vowed to eat the banana.

'Essential conceptual idea'

Cattelan, a conceptual artist known for satirical and provocative work, caused a stir with this piece back at the Art Basel Miami Beach art fair in 2019. The Perrotin Gallery sold three editions of it at prices ranging from $120,000 to $150,000.

In a 2021 interview with The Art Newspaper, Cattelan said, "To me, 'Comedian' was not a joke; it was a sincere commentary and a reflection on what we value. At art fairs, speed and business reign, so I saw it like this: If I had to be at a fair, I could sell a banana like others sell their paintings. I could play within the system but with my rules."

The piece was the talk of the art world for a while, with some critics calling it a brilliant commentary on consumerism and art itself, and others saying it was one of the worst works to be exhibited at that year's fair.

But what did the winning bidder actually buy at auction? Justin Sun won't be getting a moldy fruit or even a preserved one, but rather a fresh banana, a roll of duct tape, extensive instructions on displaying the work and a certificate of authenticity.

So much like NFTs, what you're buying isn't the actual, physical work crafted by the artist's hands, but the idea of the artwork — which, after all, is what conceptual art is all about.

"If at its core, 'Comedian' questions the very notion of the value of art, then putting the work at auction this November will be the ultimate realization of its essential conceptual idea — the public will finally have a say in deciding its true value," David Galperin, head of contemporary art for the Americas at Sotheby's, said in a statement.

A banana on a different level

One of Cattelan's peers, Georgian performance artist David Datuna, also found nutritional value in the work. At Art Basel Miami Beach, he removed the banana from the wall and ate it in an artistic intervention he titled "Hungry Artist." 

In a 2019 interview with The Guardian following the act, Datuna was critical of the work being sold for so much money, but said of Cattelan: "I think he is a genius. Art is about comedy, about fun, about tragedy, about emotions. He played this very well. I love the banana of Andy Warhol, but I think Cattelan has put the banana on a different level."

American pop artist Andy Warhol, who had a background in advertising, made almost fetishistic objects out of ordinary household items, including bananas.

Warhol used this motif for the iconic cover of the 1967 album "The Velvet Underground & Nico," creating a sticker of a yellow banana skin that peeled off to reveal an oddly pink fruit underneath.

However, unlike Cattelan's banana, where the high sale price is determined by its scarcity, Warhol intended his work to be endlessly reproducible and suited for a mass market.

In true Warholian style, he never copyrighted that iconic banana image, leaving the door wide open for other artists to use it.

One of those is German artist Thomas Baumgärtel, who has spray-painted his version of Warhol's banana on the facades of more than 4,000 museums and galleries worldwide since 1986, turning the yellow fruit into a kind of symbol denoting art itself.

Sometimes a banana is not just a banana

The banana has often been used for symbolic effect in art. Its phallic shape has made it a cipher for male sexuality — as suggested by the Warhol work mentioned above — but also in works by painters like Frida Kahlo, while its tropical origins make it a useful element of the exotic for European artists.

Both elements are at play in "Consumer Art," a video and photo work from the 1970s by pioneering Polish feminist artist Natalia LL, who depicted a model slowly and suggestively eating several food items, including a banana.

That work is provocative not only for its sensual element — which led Poland's National Museum to remove it from an exhibition in 2019, prompting widespread ridicule — but also because at the time it was made, bananas were a luxury item in Poland, then part of the Soviet Bloc.

With climate change and a fungal pathogen threatening some banana crops and driving up prices, it's possible the fruit could again become an exotic luxury.

And then Cattelan's $6-million banana might not seem quite so absurd anymore.

Update, November 21, 2024: This article has been updated with the results of the auction.

Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier