Record price for Cattelan’s banana, 6.2 million dollars

The most famous and discussed work by Maurizio Cattelan, “Comedian”, a banana stuck to the wall with adhesive tape, was sold at auction at Sotheby’s in New York, last night Wednesday 20 November, for 6.2 million dollars , including commissions. The auction house had estimated the controversial installation at $1-1.5 million.

The most expensive yellow banana in the world was snapped up in the sales room of Sotheby’s in Manhattan: seven bidders tried to win the provocative work “Comedian” by the 64-year-old artist from Padua. The winning bid was made by Sotheby’s vice president for Asia, on the phone on behalf of Justin Sun, a Chinese collector and founder of the cryptocurrency platform Tron.

“Comedian” had taken social media by storm when it was presented for the first time and sold for 120,000 dollars by the Perrotin gallery at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair in 2019. The work quickly went viral, provoking debates, sparking controversy and capturing the imagination of millions of people around the world. The crowd it attracted to the fair was so huge that it had to be removed from the building. Eaten not just once, but twice, it dominated news around the world. The banana on display in Florida at the time was purchased in a local supermarket for a few cents. The example sold for 6.2 million dollars is number 2 of an edition of 3 copies plus 2 artist’s proofs, one of which is today at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, donated by an anonymous collector .

“I am thrilled to announce that I have successfully acquired Maurizio Cattelan’s iconic work ‘Comedian’. This is not a simple work of art, but a cultural phenomenon that unites the worlds of art, memes and community of cryptocurrencies,” Justin Sun said in a statement, “I believe this work will inspire further thought and discussion in the future and become part of history. I am honored to be the proud owner of this iconic work and hope it will spark further inspiration and impact for fans of art from around the world. Additionally, in the coming days, I will personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in both art history and popular culture.”

At the end of the auction session in New York David Galperin, head of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Americas declared: “Cattelan’s ‘Comedian’ concerns the conditions that characterize our understanding of what makes something art – and one of these conditions is the value. So, when we sold this work, one of the big questions we had to face was how to evaluate it. For me the question is more specific: how to evaluate what, at least for me, is one of the most brilliant of the history of conceptual art. And what better place to ask this question than our sales room? The answer was a resounding $6.2 million.”

“Comedian”, the auction house underlined in a statement, is part of a historical-artistic heritage of conceptually bold works that have redefined what art can be: from Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’, a porcelain urinal ready for use, upside down, mounted on a pedestal and signed with a pseudonym in 1917; to Robert Rauschenberg’s ‘Deleted Drawing of William de Kooning’ from 1953, when one legendary artist defaced the work of another to destabilize notions of artistic originality; to Damien Hirst’s shark, covered in formaldehyde in 1991, to Banksy’s “Love is in the Bin”, which famously destroyed itself after being sold in the Sotheby’s auction room in 2018, thus creating a new work of art in real time.

These revolutionary works were united by a spirit of iconoclastic mockery that pushed the public to question the meaning of art, starting from the very systems that allow its creation and reception. After its presentation in 2019, “Comedian” placed itself firmly at the center of the cultural ‘Zeitgeist’: the ubiquitous duct-taped banana appeared on the cover of the “New York Post” and became an inescapable media phenomenon.

“For me ‘Comedian’ was not a joke, but a sincere comment and a reflection on what we appreciate. In art fairs speed and business reign, so I saw it this way: if I had to be present at a fair, I could sell a banana like others sell their paintings. I could play within the system, but with my own rules,” Cattelan explained in 2019.

Before the record sale, ‘Comedian’ traveled to nine cities around the world, including Dubai, Taipei, London, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong. At Sotheby’s headquarters in New York, over 12,000 visitors saw the work, along with other masterpieces of art, in the two weeks preceding the auction.