It’s the Thought that Counts
Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian
Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian is back in the news. In 2019, Cattelan made three editions of Comedian, an artwork that consists of a fresh banana duct-taped to a wall. Comedian was debuted in Perrotin’s booth at the art fair, Art Basel Miami Beach. Much to the chagrin of other participating galleries, Comedian became the highlight of the art fair and a viral social media meme. Perrotin’s list price for Comedian was $120,000. By the end of the fair, the three editions had been sold. The buyers were given a fresh banana, a roll of duct tape, a certificate of authenticity, and a fourteen-page instruction manual on how to refresh and display the work.1
Now one of those editions of Comedian has returned to the art market. On November 20, Comedian was auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York, and this time it sold for $5.2 million plus another $1 million in fees. The buyer was Justin Sun, a young crypto-entrepreneur, who proudly announced his purchase on social media, calling Comedian a “cultural phenomenon.”2
So what exactly did Sun get for his money besides a rapidly aging banana and a roll of duct tape? Sun bought himself a very expensive story. Contemporary art, like all art, is valued not for the actual materials it is made of but for the ephemeral value we place on such objects and their makers. That value, something sociologists call symbolic value, is constructed and embedded in the discourses — or narratives — that surround an art object and its artist.
Comedian was made by Italian artist, Maurizio Cattelan. Cattelan is a well-established contemporary artist who is ranked in the top 1,000 artists in the world. He first rose to prominence in 1999 with his sculpture, La Nona Ora, a life-size figure of Pope John Paul II knocked to the ground by a meteorite (see my post, “The Vatican in Venice”). He followed with more provocative prankster-ish works including a solid-gold toilet titled, America (2016), installed in a public washroom in the Guggenheim Museum, a statue of a kneeling schoolboy with the face of Adolf Hitler (Him, 2001), and Daddy, Daddy (2008), a life-size figure of Pinocchio lying face-down in a pond in the centre of the Guggenheim rotunda. And, unlike the so-called artist, Vaclav Pisvejc who smashed Ai Weiwei’s sculpture (see my post, “Who is an Artist?”) in what might have been intended as a prank, the Art World paid attention to Cattelan and gave him a good story. He moved in the right circles of peers and curators, gained private gallery representation with Perriton, was given exhibitions in ever more important venues, and books and articles were written and published about his work. All of these activities built up Cattelan’s stock of symbolic value to the point that a banana he tapes on a wall would sell for $120,000 and, in a second round, for $5.2 million.
Cattelan’s story and his value as an artist was built slowly over time with each work and exhibition. That story is also carefully linked to the past, to the longer story of how we undertand art. For example, Comedian piggy-backs on the history of Western art by re-enacting the story of Marcel Duchamp’s experiments with readymades. In the first few decades of the 20thcentury, Duchamp toyed with the question of how an object becomes art. He created a few sculptures from industrial-made objects – a snow shovel, a bicycle wheel, a wooden stool – and gave them titles. The first real test happened in 1917 when he submitted an industrial-made ceramic urinal to an art exhibition under the name, R. Mutt. The exhibition was not juried and any artist could participate by paying a fee of $6.00. On receiving the urinal as an artwork, the organizers of the exhibition were challenged to consider it art. Since it had to be accepted into the show it was hidden from view. The urinal appeared later as a photograph in an obscure art journal, The Blind Man, along with a statement about how the exhibition organizers had rejected the artwork. It took a few more decades for the urinal to finally be exhibited in a museum as art. Fountain, along with other readymade sculptures, would then contribute to the now legendary story of the artist, Marcel Duchamp.
As Duchamp, later explained, he chose his readymade sculptures not for their aesthetic form or appearance but purely for their inherent insignificance. As the statement in The Blind Man explained, these ordinary objects become art when they enter the Art World. The statement claimed,
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whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.
Through his action then, and with the help of the institutions of art, Cattelan has participated in a “social phenomenon” as Sun suggests, one that transforms objects into art. Cattelan “chose” an ordinary banana from the grocery store and placed it so that its “useful significance” has all but “disappeared under a new title [Comedian] and point of view [art].” He has given a “new thought” to the banana, one that now places it within the story of contemporary art; a story that Sun can now relate to his friends when they admire the banana on his livingroom wall.
You can watch the high tension Sotheby’s auction here:
And, you can enjoy the evolving narrative that justifies the symbolic value of Cattelan and his artistic pranks in these two videos: one hosted by the famous Italian art curator, Francesco Bonami and the other by Julien Delagrange, the Director of Contemporary Art Issue.
Thanks Marie. The Heni video was very good. The Comedian seems like the perfect piece of art for the time we are living in. I also thought your explanation of why it is considered art made explaining this phenomena to others very helpful. Indeed, this whole story offers a great opportunity to unpack contemporary art to those who mock it.