How a simple banana became a $6.2million art piece

The jaw-dropping $6.2 million sale of a single banana duct-taped to a wall at a New York auction has left many in the artworld stunned - and not just because of the eye-watering price.

Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun won a heated bidding war at Sotheby's on Wednesday, where he snapped up the infamous 'Comedian' by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan - quite possibly the world's most expensive piece of fruit.

The unusual installation, which consists of nothing more than a banana reportedly purchased for just 35 cents that has been secured to a blank wall with regular duct tape, has become a sensation among art collectors.

It was originally expected to sell for between $1 million and $1.5 million. Bidding began at $800,000, and the price quickly spiraled to a whopping $5.2 million - or $6.2 million once auction house fees were taken into account.

Sun, who founded the Tron blockchain network, outbid six other wealthy art enthusiasts to secure the controversial piece.

'This is not just an artwork,' Sun told Sotheby's after his splurge purchase, as reported by Reuters.

'It represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community. I believe this piece will inspire more thought and discussion in the future and will become a part of history.'

Three previous editions of the artwork have sold for more than $120,000 - but this latest sale was even more bizarre.

In this instance the buyer didn't even get the original fruit. 

They instead received just a 'certificate of authenticity' that gives them permission to recreate the bizarre installation - or essentially, buy their own banana to duct-tape to a wall and call Comedian. 

Some art experts claim the piece is a brutal takedown of the art world while others, like Sotheby's head of contemporary art David Galperin, call it 'profound and provocative'.

'What Cattelan is really doing is turning a mirror to the contemporary art world and asking questions, provoking thought about how we ascribe value to artworks, what we define as an artwork,' Galperin told the Associated Press.

Chloé Cooper Jones, an associate professor at the Columbia University School of the Arts emphasized the context behind the artwork.   

She said if the artwork was simply about understanding the insular, capitalist, art-collecting world, Cooper Jones said, 'it's not that interesting of an idea.' 

Cattelan is thought of 'trickster artist,' she said. 'But his work is often at the intersection of the sort of humor and the deeply macabre.'

'He's quite often looking at ways of provoking us, not just for the sake of provocation, but to ask us to look into some of the sort of darkest parts of history and of ourselves.' 

She revealed perhaps a darker truth: the banana isn't just a joke - it's a powerful symbol of global trade exploitation, imperialism, and corporate greed. 

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'It would be hard to come up with a better, simple symbol of global trade and all of its exploitations than the banana,' Cooper Jones said.

'If 'Comedian' is about making people think about their moral complicity in the production of objects they take for granted, then it's 'at least a more useful tool or it's at least an additional sort of place to go in terms of the questions that this work could be asking,' she said.

In May, a South Korean art student who was 'hungry' after skipping breakfast, ate the banana that was part of the installation.

The ripe banana masterpiece was then taped to a wall at Seoul's Leeum Musuem of Art.

The student, Noh Huyn-soo, boldly taped the peel to the wall after eating the banana. A new banana was then placed in the empty spot.

According to the museum, the banana has to be replaced every two to three days.

The incident was recorded by Huyn-soo's friend and uploaded to YouTube.

Stunned onlookers shouted 'excuse me' at Huyn-soo during the recording, but he appeared to ignore the shouts and continued eating the banana.

He briefly posed with the skin taped to the wall before leaving the room.

Speaking later to local media about the incident, Huyn-soo said the video was an act of 'rebellion' against Catellan's own 'rebellious' artwork.

'There could be another rebellion against the rebellion,' the Seoul National University student told KBS.

'Damaging an artwork could also be seen as an artwork, I thought that would be interesting... isn't it taped there to be eaten?'

When told about the incident, Cattelan, a sculptor and performance artist based in New York responded: 'No problem at all'. 

But Huyn-soo wasn't the first to pull this trick. 

Performance artist David Datuna had previously pulled the banana from a wall in 2019, after the artwork had just been sold for $120,000 at Art Basel in Miami.

The banana had been replaced at the time and no action was taken.

Datuna told The Guardian that although he considered Cattalan to be 'a genius', he took issue with the huge amount of money made from a banana that cost 20 cents.

'I have travelled in 67 countries around the world in the last three years, and I see how people live,' Datuna said. 'Millions are dying without food. Then he puts three bananas on the wall for half a million dollars?'

In a video posted on his Instagram account, Datuna, who describes himself as a Georgian-born American artist living in New York, walks up to the banana and pulls it off the wall with the duct tape attached.

'Art performance ... hungry artist,' he said, as he peeled the fruit and took a bite. 'Thank you, very good.'

A few bystanders could be heard giggling before a flustered gallery official whisked him to an adjoining space for questioning.

But the kerfuffle was resolved without a food fight.

'He did not destroy the art work. The banana is the idea,' Lucien Terras, director of museum relations for Galerie Perrotin, told the Miami Herald at the time. 

As it turns out, the value of the work is in the certificate of authenticity, the newspaper said. The banana is meant to be replaced.

A replacement banana was taped to the wall about 15 minutes after Datuna's stunt.

'This has brought a lot of tension and attention to the booth and we're not into spectacles,' Terras said. 'But the response has been great. It brings a smile to a lot of people's faces.'

Cattelan is perhaps best known for his 18-carat, fully functioning gold toilet called 'America' that he had once offered on loan to US President Donald Trump.

The toilet, valued at around $5 to $6 million, was in the news again in September when four men were charged with the theft of the item from Britain's Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of wartime leader Winston Churchill, where it had been on display.