The performative insouciance also holds promise for art’s ability to disrupt.
Nov 29, 2024 05:06 IST First published on: Nov 29, 2024 at 05:02 IST
In how many ways can one consume a banana? Straight up or in a PB&J sandwich. As a Nutella banana crepe. Or, if one is a believer in gharelu ubtans, as a base for a face mask. A leap of imagination could, however, elevate the humble fruit to fine art, as Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan showed in 2019 with Comedian — a banana duct-taped on to the gallery wall. Comedian has had a charmed life — since its debut it has been consumed by performing artists in New York and Seoul, and sold for an unbelievable $120,000-$150,000 each. Now, it has fetched $5.2m at a Sotheby’s auction in New York, bought by Chinese entrepreneur Justin Sun. He gets a roll of duct tape, installation instructions, a certificate of authenticity and a caveat: The banana and the duct tape would need to be replaced as required.
Banana’s meteoric elevation notwithstanding, what Cattelan’s “artwork” says about the commodification of art and the power of the market to propel mundane objects into stardom is much less charming. As he indicated earlier, Cattelan’s provocation was a “sincere commentary on what we value”, determined not least through the asymmetrical arbitration of taste, cultural context and economic factors that shape how art is produced and consumed.
The performative insouciance also holds promise for art’s ability to disrupt. Cattelan is no stranger to it himself. Nor is he the first to have challenged hierarchy. In 1917, Marcel Duchamp had unveiled a signed porcelain urinal as a work of art, Fountain. Almost 50 years later, Carl Andre’s Equivalent VIII, a nondescript pile of bricks, had stunned the art world into boredom. Cattelan himself had built a 18 carat solid gold fully functional toilet and named it America. In his first term at the White House, when Donald Trump had requested the Guggenheim museum to lend him Van Gogh’s Landscape With Snow, it had turned him down and offered him America instead.
