WEEKLY Dose of Art

Hey art lover,

Someone taped a banana to a wall and sold it for $120,000. Then someone else bought it for $6.2 million.

No, you didn't misread that. Yes, we're talking about the same fruit you put in your cereal.

In 2019, artist Maurizio Cattelan walked into a Miami grocery store, bought a banana for 30 cents, duct-taped it to a wall at Art Basel, and called it "Comedian." 

Three editions sold for between $120,000 and $150,000 each. Last November, one of those editions sold at Sotheby's for $6.24 million to crypto guy Justin Sun.

Performance artist David Datuna walked up to the original installation and ate the banana right off the wall. He called it "art within art." The gallery just taped up a new banana.

Soooo here's the thing, you're not buying the banana. You're buying a certificate of authenticity and instructions on how to display it. The banana is replaceable. The idea is worth millions, apparently.

So what’s the point?

This is where it gets interesting. Cattelan wasn't trying to scam anyone. He was making fun of the art market while being part of it. It's a joke about how we assign value to things that have no inherent value.

A banana rots in a week. The concept of taping a banana to a wall and calling it art? That lives forever, or at least until people stop caring.

It's absurd. It's supposed to be absurd. That's the whole point.

The art world has been doing this forever. 

In 1917, Marcel Duchamp stuck a urinal in a gallery and called it "Fountain." People lost their minds. 

Now it's in textbooks. In 2016, Damien Hirst preserved a shark in formaldehyde and sold it for millions.

The banana is just the latest chapter in a very long tradition of artists asking: "What even is art?"

Artist Spotlight of the Week

The Money Behind the Madness

Wait, there’s more

The banana isn't even the weirdest thing sold for absurd money. Not even close.

In 2021, Italian artist Salvatore Garau sold an invisible sculpture for $18,300. It's called "I Am." It's literally nothing. 

The buyer got a certificate saying they owned a 5-foot-by-5-foot area of space. Garau said the work "asks you to activate the power of the imagination." The buyer activated their bank account instead.

Then there's Yves Klein, who in the 1950s started selling "zones of immaterial pictorial sensibility", basically receipts for owning empty space. One of those receipts sold at Sotheby's in 2022 for $1.16 million. A receipt. For NOTHING.

Or how about Banksy? In 2018, his "Girl With Balloon" sold at Sotheby's for $1.4 million. The second the hammer came down, the painting started shredding itself, Banksy had hidden a shredder in the frame. Everyone freaked out. 

Three years later, that same shredded painting sold for $25.4 million. Destroying it made it worth more.

The art world is wild like that. Break something? It's worth more. Sell nothing? Still worth thousands. Tape a banana to a wall? Millions.

This Week in Art

The Takeaway

Next time you see a fruit bowl at home, who knows, you might be sitting on a fortune. You just need duct tape, a gallery connection, and absolutely zero shame lol.

If you ask any art nerd, they would tell you that the banana isn't expensive because it's a banana. It's costly because it started a conversation. And in the art world, conversations are priceless (or extremely pricey from what we know so far).

Literally, they're worth $6.2 million.

What's the weirdest thing you'd pay serious money for if someone called it art? 

Hit reply and let us know. We might feature the best answers next week.