GOING, GOING, GONE BANANAS: Cattelan’s 'Comedian' Takes $6+ Million at Auction

VIDEO: See it at Sotheby's @chelseagallerista

UPDATE: Comedian just hammered for $5.2m (plus $1m in fees).

+++

IN EXACTLY 5 minutes time, bidding will open at Sotheby’s New York for a slew of contemporary artworks with low estimates ranging from $50k to $12 million (Yu Nishimura's Pause (2020) and Stuart Davis' Contranuities, respectively). 

Falling somewhere in between is disrupter Maurizio Cattelan’s much-hyped Comedian (2019), aka “the duct-taped banana.” It’s the latest contemporary art gambit to dominate your scroll since the shredded Banksy, the AI-robot painter, the NFT cash grab, the $450m Salvatore Mundi…

Originally bodega-priced at $120k, Comedian is estimated to hammer for $1-1.5 million, depending on how many “bites” it gets. The winner receives neither fruit nor roll of duct tape, but instead, a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist. This slip of paper represents little more than an artworld “consensus” that the buyer owns one of 3 genuine “editions.”  As long as bananas still grow on trees, ephemeral, conceptual artworks like Comedian can always be "executed." However,  execution is the least of what counts here. More about that in a minute... 

From grocery aisle to blue-chip gallery 

The pre-auction exhibition for Comedian was impressive. Sotheby’s gave the banana the full Mona Lisa treatment, building a dedicated pavilion in an empty, cavernous room. Passing though the arched doorway, you feel like a VIP entering a secret shrine at the Venice Biennale.  So ridiculously incongruous is this artwork, it almost begs you to do something involuntary, like bow and kiss it like the Blarney Stone and wish fervently for world peace. To complete the picture, a lone security guard hovers in the corner, ready to crash-tackle aspiring banana-lifters.

VIDEO: A walk around the shrine to Comedian

ChelseaGallerista is pleased to bring you this exclusive, atypical angle, evoking the backside view of the Statue of Liberty... 

Viewers leave with a whole new perspective on their humble fruit bowl

I was inches away from snatching it off the wall and executing a Hungry Comedian II

 The details that matter when gavel hits the rostrum

BUT maybe "banana-lifting" is tacitly encouraged: at the Art Basel Miami 2019 debut of Comedian, performance artist David Datuna brazenly walked up, peeled it off the wall, ate it and re-named it “Hungry Comedian:”

Snackable art

I personally think this was a pre-arranged stunt, like the self-shredding Banksy at Christies, which moved the price of the somewhat overexposed “girl with heart balloon” from $1m to $25m at auction:

Shredder love

Who thinks Hungry Comedian would have been funner (and probably gotten more ra-ra) if security had stormed in and wrestled Datuna to the ground, much like they did with paint-spattering climate activists under the indifferent gaze of the Mona Lisa? 

A climate-fueled storm in a soupcan

Eat, replace, repeat: Comedian is edibly eternal

The first question I get even from my art-cognizant friends, is about the "perishability" of the banana. This suggests conceptual art is still a giant WTF for most. I tell them I liken Comedian to Felix Gonzales Torres’ Portrait of Ross in LA: a pile of candy in a corner representing the weight of his friend slowly wasting away from AIDS. The candy is meant to be eaten, then replaced, suggesting that while his friend may physically pass, his essence remains sweetly alive. Chelsea gallerist Jim Kempner, a comedian in his own right, hilariously lampooned this work (or rather, those who might buy it) in one his Madness of Art webisodes:

"I can get you a picture of a person walking through a forest with a deer, but that's not going to get you anywhere." - Jim Kempner, The Madness of Art

 

It's also akin to a Sol Lewitt wall drawing that consists of a sheet of instructions and a team of people you can hire to execute them. Than means, for a cool ~$250K - you can go to OfficeWorks, stock up on pencils and rulers, then go back to your wall and have at it. Just that you can't eat it.

Duct tape dissertations: Comedian is food for academic thought

Pontification re this piece is off the charts. I’m fully expecting it to spawn art history PhD theses for years to come, alongside the Bachelors of Beyonce and Masters of Taylor Swift. The artelligenzia compares it to Duchamp’s groundbreaking Fountain, the famous urinal signed and hung on a wall and declared art. Over a century later, Comedian has shifted cocktail party banter from Duchamp's toilet bowl to Cattalan's fruit bowl.

Self-indulgently pontificating for a moment, I think there's an undeniable brilliance in his choice of a banana, duct tape and a wall. Bananas are inherently funny, associated with clowns and slapstick humor. When paired with ephemerality, absurdity, and the cannily deadpan title, Comedian, this assemblage elicited in me a mix of respect and embarrassment. People were speaking in hushed tones, art advisors postured before their clients, and you find yourself forgiving the banana for taking the time you'll never get back apeing it, while half the world is starving... if anything is ripe, it's us - for suckerdom.

And let's not give the duct tape short shrift: that’s a BDSM reference for sure, with the banana as suppository, bound and gagged in submissive restraint, easily prodded, denuded and devoured, to be  replaced by another from the fruit bowl. The silvery duct tape itself gleams in the spotlight like it's one giant pastie in a burlesque show. 

And look: banana and duct tape form an “X” – is this a new, comedic swastika suggesting X will take over the world and Elon Musk will be our next president?

Sticker Swap: Replace "Dole" with "Cattelan" and watch your investment bear fruit

Let's not forget how the cult of celebrity bolsters conceptual art. Cattelan is a blue chip artist, famous for visual pranks like the hanging horse at Fondazione Prada, an 18k gold toilet you could take a 3 minute dump in at the Guggenheim, an effigy of the Pope struck with a meteor, and more recently, Sunday (2024), a comment on gun violence in the form of gold plated walls riddled with bullets at Gagosian. As with Koons, Lichtenstein, Ruscha, Wool, Stella and other made-its, everything an artist of Cattelan's standing touches automatically turns to gold.

I spotted Cattelan at a couple of recent art events, including the opening of The Highline's latest plinth sculpture, Dinosaur, by Ivan Argote. A little Googling and you'll discover why: Cattelan has a penchant for pigeons, insttalling Turisti (1997) - 2000 faux pigeons and matching birdshit - at the 1997 Venice Biennale. (I'd like to see him spatter Paris Fashion Week with faux birdshit, a la Sasha Baron-Cohen/Bruno and his velcro suit). 

Cattelan bonding with Dinosaur. let's fantasize it's a trojan pigeon, with all 2000 model pigeons from his "Turista" sculpture rolled up inside. 

The instantly recognizable Cattelan can run but he can't hide

I cheekily proposed to the artist that he do an intervention on the smokestack behind us. (Chelsea neighbor of note Pamela Wolff suggested someone do Rapunzel effigy out the chimney window). Cattelan, sartorially coiffed and shod in impeccable Milan style, good-naturedly sniffed, "I theenk about it," that it's probably difficult to "get permission." More likely, fellow conceptual artist Richard Artschwager beat him to it by installing a "blp" at the top, circa 2012. It's hard to tell from a distance if the blp still remains, or is simply an open window... 

The chimney that's begging for a Rapunzel intervention... 

The other show where I ran into Cattelan was the cerebral Llyn Foulkes' Untied State of America at the disarmingly-named A Hug from the Art World (the acronym is more sinister). You can see a mutual nod between Sunday, Cattelan's bullet-ridden gold panels at Gagosian, and Foukes' bullet-ridden car door. 

One thing I believe (and appreciate) about truly great, blue-chip artists, is both quality and execution of their ideas remain consistent for the high price commanded. This is irrespective of whether I  "like" a particular work. So far, Cattelan delivers on all fronts. The one time we can permit them a drop off in quality is when they reach their 80s and 90s - because if you've made it that far, you can churn out what you damn well please. 

Comedian 2019: 5 years in the ripening pays off

Back in 2019 when the banana first slipped into the scene at Art Basel Miami Beach, the internet when wild with #cattelanbanana memes. It's interesting to think about how the lead-up to this auction has been carefully nurtured and orchestrated, like a long-range political plan. In fact, I asked ChatGPT about where it's been since then: 

Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian, the controversial banana duct-taped to a wall, first appeared in December 2019 at Art Basel in Miami Beach, where it sparked significant attention and debate. After its debut, various iterations of the artwork were showcased worldwide.  

 

In 2020, one piece was donated to the Guggenheim Museum in New York, while another version was sent to the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul in 2023, where it too became part of the ongoing dialogue about the art's impermanence, with students even eating the banana as part of their interaction with it​. 

 

In addition to its museum tours, Comedian has been sold and re-sold, reaching a peak of fame and controversy that culminated in the piece being auctioned at Sotheby’s in November 2024...​

At the time, I was in Germany for the country's Bauhaus Centenary, where you can commune with your 'Haus heroes by staying in the actual UNESCO-listed Bauhaus school for a bargain $60/night. While running from one Bauhaus exhibition to the next, I created my own tribute to Comedian, doctoring the classic signage on the storied student accommodation building from BAUHAUS to BANANAS (amazing what you can do on an iPhone)...

2019 was the year of Bauhaus turned 100 and the Cattelan banana was born... 

Eat, sleep and be creative like Josef and Anni Albers, Bayer, Breuer, Kandinsky and Klee

And in the time it's taken me to draft this post, Comedian just hammered for $5.2m, or $6.2m with Sotheby’s 20% “buyer's premium." Note, Cattelan will not receive a penny of this sale. But his stock - and invites to the most exclusive gatherings will continue to go bananas (which is probably why he's always dressed to impress). I fully expect to see his smiling, unmistakeable face waving from the round portal of Space X or the next hot ticket to ride. 

See you all at Art Basel Miami! I’m going out for a banana split. Oh, and I'll proceed immediately to my portfolio to purchase stock in Dole and 3M. 

VIDEO: @chelseagallerista tours Comedian at Sothebys