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When I started dating my now husband, the decor in his dorm apartment included a banana that he and his roommates had drunkenly taped to the wall. ...Twelve years later, believe it or not, he still has it in a plastic bag somewhere in our apartment.
So imagine my surprise when I arrived at the VIP preview for Art Basel Miami Beach and discovered that Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan had done exactly the same thing. The most important difference being, of course, that this version—sourced from a local Miami supermarket and on sale from Perrotin, the Parisian gallery with locations in New York and across Asia—cost a cool $120,000.
"We sold it already," announced a triumphant Emmanuel Perrotin as I took a close look at the piece, titled Comedian. The buyer, a French woman, has bought work from the gallery before, but never a work by Cattelan, I was told.
By the time I left the booth, a deal on a second edition of the piece had also been closed, sold to a French man. (Perrotin told him about my husband's banana, to reassure him that the banana would age well, and the collector threatened to buy that one instead.)
[...] After the second sale, Perrotin quickly texted Cattelan, and the two agreed to raise the price to $150,000 for the third edition of the work, which they have decided to sell to a museum—and two institutions have already expressed interest, according to the gallery. (There are also two artists proofs of the work, only one of which is for sale.)
[...] The artist wouldn't speak to the work's meaning, but he was partially inspired by the large number of paintings he's seen at galleries recently. "I'm not in Miami, but I'm sure it's full of paintings as well," said Cattelan. "I thought maybe a banana could be a good contribution!"
https://news.artnet.com/market/maurizio-cattelan-banana-art-basel-miami-beach-1722516
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Wednesday December 11 2019, @07:40PM (3 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 11 2019, @09:40PM (1 child)
I don't know, there's times when I look at Andy Warhol's stuff and think Valerie Solanas might have had the right idea for the wrong reasons. There's some of Warhol's work in the modern section of my local art museum, and I find it among the least interesting pieces there.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 12 2019, @01:52PM
Minimalism can be sublime, but a banana duck-taped to a wall doesn't strike me as that. The latter, and Andy Warhol in general, are the pretentious, absurd sort of thing that places like the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in NY go in for.
On the other end of the spectrum there's Dia:Beacon, an art museum up the Hudson that has divine works; Bill Jacobson's pieces [theculturetrip.com], sculptures made from old car bumpers, or Richard Serra's [squarespace-cdn.com], made out of gigantic pieces of battleship steel, are a couple examples of how much complexity and effort can be distilled into something seemingly simple.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by LVDOVICVS on Wednesday December 11 2019, @10:06PM
The movie "Gummo" featured a scene with bacon taped to a bathtub wall. That was 1997. Bananas and duct tape isn't even trying hard.
https://screenqueens.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/1.jpg [wordpress.com]