Maurizio Cattelan
Comedian
Self-published, 2019
20 x 20 x 5 cm.
Edition of 3 [+ 5 AP]
Maurizio Cattelan’s work Comedian consists of a grocery store banana duct-taped to a wall, produced in an edition of three. It debuted at Paris gallery Perrotin’s booth at the Art Basel Miami fair in 2019, with a price tag of $120,000.
It was a polarizing work, with many dismissing it as a crass prank and others defending it as a work in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (Yoko Ono’s Apple from 1966 - see below - might be a better frame of reference).
The title Comedian supports the first reading, but the fruit has also been a comedy staple since turn of the 20th century, from the practiced pratfalls of early vaudeville to the acclaimed Thomas Pynchon novel Gravity's Rainbow. For several decades, the best-selling sheet music was the 1923 Irving Cohn novelty song "Yes! We Have No Bananas"
Two vaudeville comics - both named Billy Watson - have laid claim to originating the slipping on a banana peel gag: Sliding Billy Watson (1876-1939) and Billy “Beef Trust” Watson (1852–1945). The stunt first appeared on screen in Harold Lloyd’s silent film The Flirt (1917), followed by Buster Keaton's The High Sign (1921), Charlie Chaplin’s The Pilgrim (1923) and The Battle of the Century (1927) by Laurel and Hardy.
In the fifth episode of the TV series Arrested Development, the fruit is used to mock the super-wealthy for having no notion of the price of groceries. Matriarch Lucille Bluth admonishes her son for charging his brother for a frozen banana: “I mean it’s one banana, Michael, what could it cost, ten dollars?” Her ignorance is particularly galling given that selling bananas was part of the family business.
“To me, Comedian was not a joke,” Cattelan clarified, “it was a sincere commentary and a reflection on what we value. 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.”
The work was the subject of international media coverage when performance artist David Datuna snatched the banana from the wall, and proceeded to peel and eat it. He argued that his gesture was a performance in its own right, not an act of vandalism.
Comedian featured on the cover of both New York Magazine and the New York Post, and was the subject of a book titled Beauty (and the Banana), by author Brian C. Nixon.
All three editions sold at the fair. The first two were purchased by private collectors and the third sold for an even higher price. The sum was undisclosed but is thought to be in the range of $150 000. This sale was anonymous and the buyer later donated the work to The Guggenheim museum in New York City.
One of the first two iterations is now being auctioned at Sotheby’s next month, with an estimated value of between a million and a million and a half dollars. For that price, the winning bidder will receive a roll of duct tape and single fresh banana, along with a signed certificate and installation instructions.
