Monkey Business

Banana? 6.2 million dollars, please.

Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian. Credits: UOL

That banana is in the news again. We cannot help ourselves. For the uninitiated, conceptual artist/prankster Maurizio Cattelan unveiled his piece in 2019 at Art Basel Miami Beach, and it became, more or less, the banana heard ‘round the world. The piece itself consists of a banana (referred to from now on as Comedian) crudely duct taped to the exhibition wall. The piece and a copy sold for $120,000 each.

If that were not enough, Comedian was recently scooped up by crypto-entrepreneur Justin Sun, who paid 6.2 million dollars for the piece (no banana! — but a digitized certificate of authenticity, proof of ownership, and instructions for re-taping a banana, any banana, back to the wall, after the original begins to rot), thrusting the conceptual art gag back into the pop-culture fray, once again, for better or for worse, creating yet another moment for itself in the limelight, as art critics, artists, and cultural commentators attempt to put into words a context that rarely attempts to justify the piece itself, but instead, explain the phenomenon of why such an event could, would or should take place at all.

The “event”, one might suppose, is much more Comedian’s price tag, as opposed to the cultural conversational moment around art and value. Now, one could argue that these fuel one another, are one and the same. But, then again, had the piece not been included in a famous exhibition, or had not being highly evaluated, would we have even heard of Comedian? It is typical of our current rate to speak of art almost strictly in terms of money — again, we cannot help ourselves.

“But more than that, we also risk missing a bigger picture, or, a chance to have a more robust dialogue on the value of value, the subjectivity of objects and the arbitrary worth we put on things.”

Some have shouted out “money laundering!”, “financial fraud!”, or the usual type of suspicions that have long become synonymous with the excesses of the art world. These are typical and, in some cases, true. But I generally find the simplicity of the money laundering explanation to be a bit lazy or, at the very least, easily and often lazily flung. I say that because, in the realm of the art world, it is hard to explain, defend, or imagine some of the astronomical prices that are paid for certain works. This provides an easy avenue to indulge in conspiratorial thinking. Obviously, no one would pay that amount of money for that!

The problem here is, people often do. And when couching the perceived irrationality with something logical albeit immoral (like the oft resorted to laundering explanation), you risk missing the larger absurdity of it all: inconceivable as it may be, yes, people do have that much money, and yes, they will spend it on things like that. But more than this, we also risk missing a bigger picture, a chance to have a more robust dialogue on the value of value, the subjectivity of objects and the arbitrary worth we put on things when we are too quick to attribute more financially rational motives.

(Note: also, if one were to buy art to wash or hide money, they would be less
likely to purchase something in the limelight, so brazen. There are plenty of expensive paintings to buy that would go unnoticed. Why bring unnecessary attention to yourself?)

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Thinking On The Value Of Things

In the city of Piracicaba (São Paulo, Brazil), in the central area that is full of shops and boutiques, I came across a storefront of large glass windows showcasing a bevy of wristwatches. Some golden, some bespeckled in jewels, shiny — and some of them quite attractive. As I stood there, I noticed the price tag of several of them — a month’s salary, even more for others! They were in boxes of leather, burnt umber, aquatic blue, their emblems sewn, stitched, emblazoned on their cases. Anyway, as I stood there long enough, I had a moment, a kind of out-of-body experience. For the sake of the story, I got lost in the showcase. I lost myself, and in a kind of daze, I forgot what I was looking at. Or, was it that I saw the watches, in all their preposterousness, more clearly?