Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan once again caused a stir on the art market Wednesday evening in New York with a banana attached to the wall and purchased for $6.2 million by a Chinese-American entrepreneur.
It’s just a banana taped to a wall, but the work of Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan once again caused a sensation on the art market Wednesday evening in New York, purchased for $6.2 million by a Chinese-American entrepreneur.
In the Sotheby’s auction room, seven buyers or their representatives competed for the acquisition of the work “ Comedian », a banana hung on a wall using a piece of thick silver tape. For several minutes, the price climbed, going from 800,000 dollars to 5.2 million, or 6.2 million with fees, at the moment when the sound of the hammer sounded.
Shortly after, Justin Sun, founder of the cryptocurrency platform Tron, claimed to be the buyer in a Sotheby’s press release.
The work of the iconoclastic and provocative artist Maurizio Cattelan, which exists in three copies, is supposed to question the notion of art and its value. She has been talked about a lot since her first exhibition in 2019 in Miami, where another artist ate her to denounce its price, at the time $120,000. Another copy was donated to the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
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Sotheby’s had set its estimate on Wednesday between $1 million and $1.5 million. The conditions of sale provide that the buyer is given a certificate of authenticity and instructions for replacing the fruit.
The day before, at Christie’s, “ The empire of lights “, an iconic painting by René Magritte, was sold for $121 million, setting an auction record for the artist, in the centenary year of the Surrealist movement.
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