It was a banana duct-taped to a wall (see photo at left).
And it’s no more. “The student told the museum he ate it because he was hungry,” CNN reported (in a story here).
If I duct-tape a banana to a wall, it’s a banana (and potentially food). If Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan does it, it’s an “iconic artwork” that sold for $120,000. Let me tell you, I’ve got a banana for sale, too!
I mean, what kind of racket is that — you buy a banana at a grocery store for 89¢/lb., tape it to a wall with 1/10th of a cent’s worth of duct tape, and sell it for $120K? That’s one hell of a markup. Even Bill Gates never scored a profit margin like that.
The banana “sculpture” even had a name: “Comedian.” The joke was on the sucker who paid 120 Big Ones for it. What happens to that “art” investment when the banana goes bad (photo, below right), as all bananas do in short order?
This is not the place to dive into a deep discussion of what “art” is. It’s not whatever someone will pay money for, although $120K will give anything, even a banana, cachet if someone’s willing to pony up, and in this case, someone did. But I’m almost sure there’s a tax dodge or some other angle in there.
The dictionary says art is “the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects.” In my book, that rules out a banana taped to a wall, because the artist didn’t produce the banana, a tree did.
I think the argument will be that it’s art because no one ever thought of taping a banana to a wall before, and since what artists do is make us see familiar things in new ways, and we’re all familiar with bananas but had never seen one duct-taped to a walls that makes it original — and therefore art. To which I say, baloney.
I won’t go so far as to say that if it’s perishable, it isn’t art, because everything is perishable. Cave paintings that are 35,000 years old won’t last forever, but they’re undeniably art. Michelangelo’s famous “David” statue is marble, not butter, but I guess whether it’s art or pornography depends on which state you teach 6th graders in (see story here; for another stupid firing, go here). But it seems to me that if you can eat it, it’s food, not art, so I’ll side with that student on this one.
In any case, even if “Comedian” once was art, it’s not anymore. Now it’s indisputably just food, and within 24 hours, what’s left of it will be poop. For 120 grand, are there any takers?