A Duct-Taped Banana Could Fetch US$1.5 Million at Auction

An edition of Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian, 2019, will be sold in November at Sotheby’s in New York for an estimate between $1 million and $1.5 million.

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The Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan is getting another chance to annoy and delight art critics—and make headlines—with his infamous banana taped to a wall that is actually a work of contemporary art.

Titled Comedian, the piece sparked outrage, amusement, discourses on meaning and art history—and a snack for one fairgoer—when it was exhibited at Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2019. At the time, three editions of the artwork created from two artist proofs were sold for prices ranging from US$120,000 to US$150,000.

Now, the “number 2” edition will appear in the hallowed halls of the 280-year-old Sotheby’s, where it will be sold by an anonymous collector as a highlight of the auction house’s the Now and contemporary evening sale in November in New York. The estimated price range is between US$1 million and US$1.5 million.

“If at its core, _Comedian _questions the very notion of the value of art, then putting the work at auction this November will be the ultimate realization of its essential conceptual idea—the public will finally have a say in deciding its true value,” David Galperin, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art, said in a statement.

Posing in front of Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian at Perrotin Gallery’s during Art Basel Miami Beach 2019.

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For the artist, the piece was always meant to be a commentary on art and value and meaning in the vein of Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 Fountain, a porcelain toilet, and Damien Hirst’s 1991 The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living—a tiger shark swimming forever in formaldehyde within a glass display case.

Even closer kinship can be found in South African artist Roelof Louw’s Soul City (Pyramid of Orange), a 5-foot 6-inch square x 5-foot-high pyramid of about 5,800 oranges held within a wooden frame, displayed by the Arts Lab in London’s Covent Garden in October 1967. Visitors were invited to take and eat the displayed oranges.

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“To me, Comedian was not a joke; it was a sincere commentary and a reflection on what we value,” Cattelan told the Art Newspaper in November 2021. “At art fairs, speed and business reign, so I saw it like this: If I had to be at a fair, I could sell a banana like others sell their paintings. I could play within the system, but with my rules.”

One factor in the work’s value will be the certificate of authenticity that accompanies each work. At the time of the Art Basel sale, a spokesperson for Perrotin, the gallery representing the artist, said the certificates have “exact instructions for installation and authenticates that the work is by Maurizio Cattelan.” (The real bananas at the core of each work are constantly replaced.)

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One of the editions was bought by Miami collectors Billy and Beatrice Cox, while  another went to Paris collector Sarah Andelman. The artist proofs were bought by museums. An anonymous donor gave one edition to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Artsy reported in September 2020.

One example of the work was eaten by a hungry visitor to Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art last year, according to published reports, echoing the same fate the artwork experienced at Art Basel Miami Beach when it was first displayed in 2019.

Visitors who have never seen a banana duct-taped to a wall will have a chance on Monday at Sotheby’s headquarters in New York before it is displayed in eight other cities around the world: London, Paris, Milan, Hong Kong, Dubai, Taipei, Tokyo, and Los Angeles. The banana will be back in New York on Nov. 8 before it arrives on the auction block on Nov. 20.