“To have a banana” means to have a smile, to be happy.
I’ve had bananas all week. I laughed so much! A banana stuck to the wall with a large piece of gray adhesive tape was sold for 6.2 million US dollars ($8.6 million in Canadian dollars) at Sotheby’s in New York.
And it’s not an April Fool’s joke. It is rather proof that the art market is in the process ofself-peeling bananas.
The work of the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan is named Comedianwhich means comedian. This is indeed the best joke of the year.
“The most expensive fruit in the world”
It’s so crazy that any artist can walk into any IGA, Métro or Maxi, go to the fruit and vegetable section, take any cucurbit and declare that it’s a work of art. ‘art.
Well yes!, as Martin Matte would say.
Clearly, this banana gives banana. As the magazine reminds us Beaux-Arts“in 2019, it caused a lot of ink to flow (and caused worldwide laughter) when a French collector bought it for $120,000. Which, even at the time, had made this banana the most expensive fruit in the world.
Except that here, we are talking about selling for 6 million dollars a fruit that will rot and which will have to be replaced every seven days. So, what exactly are we selling? A concept, an idea, a performance, a farce, a hoax?
This story gave rise to lots of jokes. I saw a really funny image where we see lots of bananas in an art gallery admiring a work of art on the wall: a man stuck to the wall with a big piece of gray adhesive tape.
I saw another one, by the Russian artist Michael Liv, which made me think a lot. We see in several boxes the evolution of art history.
First, in the first box, a monkey is thinking of a banana. Then the caveman thinks of the images painted on the walls in Lascaux. Leonardo da Vinci thinks about his famous painting Mona Lisa, The Mona Lisa. Goya thinks of his famous painting Third of May. Picasso thinks of his famous painting Guernica. Finally, in the last box, the creator of the banana thinks of his famous work: the banana stuck to the wall with a large piece of gray adhesive tape.
Hahaha! It’s so funny. All this evolution to arrive at this mediocrity and return to square one?
Throw me some tomatoes!
You will tell me that this is not the first time in the history of art that provocative artists provoke. Marcel Duchamp installed a urinal in a museum by declaring that it was a work of art and calling it ready-mades. The Italian artist Piero Manzoni created the works in 1961 Artist shitcans on which he had printed: “Artist’s shit, net content gr 30, preserved natural, produced and canned in May 1961”.
The banana’s new owner promised to “eat the banana into a unique artistic experience.” He could also sell his shit in a club after shitting the banana.
