Hot Slut Of The Day!
Duct tape banana, the Mona Lisa of Art Basel!
By now, I’m sure that over your fireplace in your living room is a bootleg reproduction (read: a browning banana duct taped to the wall) of Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian (read: a browning banana duct tape to the wall). But there’s only one itty bitty difference between your bootleg reproduction and the original. The original brought in two buyers who paid $120,000 to own that wreck, while your bootleg reproduction will only bring in the fruit flies.
Art Basel is going down in Miami right now, and the HIGH ART piece that is reportedly moistening the tips of art hos is a banana duct taped to the wall. Don’t roll your eyeballs something extra (although, if you do, do it at Art Basel, call it a performance art piece and charge $5000 each to watch it), because a gorilla booby trap set up by a stoner on the wrong kind of strain IS art, bitch!
Italian artiste Maurizio Cattelan is known for his prank art and his pieces include headless taxidermy horses, duct-taping a gallerist to the wall, and the snatched gold toilet.
???? Our proposed topic for Thanksgiving table talk: what's your theory on what happened to Maurizio Cattelan's artwork "America," stolen two months ago?https://t.co/C2WAAUwmQc
— Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (@mcachicago) November 28, 2019
There’s several editions of Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian, which is a fitting name since that shit brings out the laughs, and the first one sold for $120,000 to a French lady. The French must love fruit taped to a wall, because a French man bought the second edition for $120,000 too. Artnet says that because crazy art people are losing it for a banana bought from a supermarket in Miami (if it was a Whole Foods, then Cattelan’s only making like $5,000 profit), the price for the third edition of Comedian was raised to $150,000 and will be sold to a museum.
Cattelan and Emmanuel Perrotin, the gallery owner who is representing him, told Artnet that he’s been working on that shit for a year before deciding to go full fuck effort by just taping a banana to the wall. As for if Comedian is commentary on GMOs, or the patriarchy, or how rich assholes will waste their money on absolutely anything, Cattelan wouldn’t say.
Cattelan has been working on the idea for Comedian for about a year, first creating versions in bronze and resin. Somehow, they were lacking. “Wherever I was traveling I had this banana on the wall. I couldn’t figure out how to finish it,” Cattelan told me when Perrotin handed me the phone with him on the line. “In the end, one day I woke up and I said ‘the banana is supposed to be a banana.’”
The artist wouldn’t speak to the work’s meaning, but he was partially inspired by the large number of paintings he’s seen at galleries recently. “I’m not in Miami, but I’m sure it’s full of paintings as well,” said Cattelan. “I thought maybe a banana could be a good contribution!”
Cattelan and Perrotin aren’t worried about copycats because they say a banana is just a banana until it’s been authenticated as a Cattelan original.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall of the French home of one of the owners of that mess. I only say that because I’d love to nibble on that $120,000 banana and cackle as it rots on the wall of some fancy ho’s fancy apartment.
Pic: YouTube