Vendor's reaction after learning his 35 cent banana bought for $5.2M

A man who initially sold a 35-cent banana was stunned and heartbroken to discover that his produce sold for $5.2 million at auction. 

Shah Alam, 74, works for $12 an hour at a fruit stand outside Sotheby's auction house on Manhattan's Upper East Side. 

Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun won a heated bidding war inside that 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 that has been secured to a blank wall with regular duct tape, has become a sensation among art collectors.

The banana was purchased from Alam's stand for just 35 cents. He learned of the outcome of the sale a few days later, having had no idea he'd sold a multi-million dollar banana, worth $6.2 million after auction fees.

'I am a poor man. I have never had this kind of money; I have never seen this kind of money,' he told the New York Times. 

Alam, who is nearly blind, left his civil servant job in Bangladesh in 2007 to move closer to his daughter on Long Island. 

He lives in a $500-a-month apartment shared with five other men in the Bronx and works 12 hours per day, making just under $150 per shift.  

Alam, who has no memory of the sale, also doesn't quite understand what's so interesting about the art installation: 'Those who bought it, what kind of people are they? Do they not know what a banana is?' 

The artist who created 'Comedian,' Cattelan said he appreciates Alam's 'role' in the sale.

'The reaction of the banana vendor moves me deeply, underscoring how art can resonate in unexpected and profound ways. However, art, by its nature, does not solve problems — if it did, it would be politics.' 

Sun, the man who bought the artwork, spoke similarly: 'His role in this artwork is not taken lightly' and called it 'poignant.'

In response to the news, a GoFundMe has been started to help out Alam by an anonymous person who promised to match everyone who met the $5,000 goal.  

The user, known only as 'J S' wrote: 'Do we really want to live in a city where we can shrug off a street vendor who’s moved to tears by the fact that he’s been made the butt of a joke involving an amount of wealth obscene to him, while celebrating some smartass for figuring out how to make $6 million from that joke? If this utter and gross indifference isn’t what ails us, what is?' 

He also slammed Cattelan's statement, saying he was essentially calling Alam's plight 'none of my business.'

The crowdfund has hit over $7,600, with 'J S' matching the first $5,000, meaning he's already over $12,000. 

The jaw-dropping $6.2 million sale of the 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.  

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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'.

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'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.

'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.

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.

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.