Joke is on us: Banana stuck to wall with duct tape sells for $150,000 at Miami exhibit
While it seems absurd to pay nearly $150,000 for a banana duct-taped to a wall, modern art lovers are shelling out just that to get their hands on the prized installation by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan that's housed at the Art Basel Miami Beach.
The artwork in question, titled "the Comedian," was first sold by Perrotin, the Parisian art gallery with multiple galleries in New York and across Asia, for a whopping $120,000. It was purchased by an unnamed French woman. The second edition of the art was sold to an unnamed French man before the price of the third edition was bumped to $150,000, Artnet reported.
For the third edition, two institutions have already expressed interest.
The art in question consists of a ripe banana that was sourced from a local market and then taped to a blank, whitewashed wall using a piece of duct tape. A picture of the artwork shared on Perrotin's website showed an array of books arranged underneath the taped fruit.
"We sold it already," Emmanuel Perrotin said of the piece, adding that he was quite surprised at the buzz and interest generated by the banana art, especially since Cattelan's work was not popular when he was starting out as an artist.
"It's a miracle; I don't know how this happened!... When we started to work together I had to fight to convince collectors one by one to buy his work," he said.
While Cattelan remained tight-lipped when it came to divulging the meaning behind the art, he said that he was extremely specific when it came to choosing the right fruit for his pieces and also carefully considered where the banana would be placed in relation to the wall.
He said that he realized the artwork had to be made with a real fruit after making failed versions of the same art using bronze and resin to create the banana.
"Wherever I was traveling I had this banana on the wall. I couldn't figure out how to finish it," Cattelan said, adding that he struggled with turning his concept into reality for a year. "In the end, one day I woke up and I said 'the banana is supposed to be a banana.'"
He admitted that he was partially inspired by all the large paintings he's seen at galleries. "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!"
The artist made headlines in September when his creation - a toilet made with 18-karat gold and worth $6 million - was stolen from the Bleinheim Palace in the UK.