Presented for the first time in Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2019, where it was on sale for $120,000 At the stand of the famous Perrotin gallery, the work ‘Comedian’, by Maurizio Cattelan (a banana stuck to the wall with adhesive tape), debuts at auction. It will be in the living room Sotheby’s New York on November 20. Its estimated value: between 1 and 1.5 million dollars. Before the sale it will go on a world tour to New York, London, Paris, Milan, Hong Kong,| Dubai, Taipei, Tokyo and Los Angeles. We understand that it will not be the same banana that visits all these cities. A ‘performance’ worthy of appearing in an episode of the series ‘Fine arts’. Perrotin managed to sell all three editions of the work at the fair (among the buyers, Sarah Andelman, founder of the Colette boutique, and Billy and Beatrice Cox, from Miami), even raising the price to $150,000 for the final copy. Although there were many people interested in purchasing it, including Damien Hirst, the gallery chose to keep two artist’s proofs.
Since it appeared in 2019, the work of art? quickly became a global viral sensation that left a lasting impact on contemporary cultural consciousness. Its appearance attracted crowds, divided spectators and critics alike, and caused such chaos that it had to be removed from the venue before the end of the fair. Revered and much discussed (and devoured not just once, but twice), the work topped the news shared around the world. No other work of art of the 21st century has provoked the same controversy, nor disrupted the very definition of contemporary art as Cattelan’s ‘Comedian’.
It stands within a historical legacy of conceptually audacious works that redefined what art could be: from ‘The Fountain’, by Marcel Duchamp -turned a urinal into an emblematic work of modern art by boldly signing the ‘ready-made’ with the pseudonym «R. Mutt» in 1917-; until De Kooning’s erased drawing that Robert Rauschenberg did in 1953 – a legendary artist defaced the work of another equally legendary artist to destabilize notions of artistic originality; The shark in formaldehyde by Damien Hirst in 1991 or ‘Love is in the trash’ by Banksywhich fell to pieces after being sold at Sotheby’s in 2018, creating a new work of art in real time. These revolutionary works shared an iconoclastic prankster spirit that caused audiences to question the meaning of art from within the very systems that enable its creation and reception.
In an interview with ‘The Art Newspaper’, Cattelan reflected on the conceptual underpinnings of ‘Comedian’ and said: “For me, ‘Comedian’ it wasn’t a joke; It was a sincere comment and a reflection on what we value. At art fairs, speed and business rule, 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.”
After its presentation in 2019, ‘Comedian’ became a media phenomenon: the banana tied with duct tape appeared on the cover of ‘The New York Post’. It was conceived in an edition of three, plus two artist’s proofs. A copy is preserved in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, donated by an anonymous person. The donation did not include the banana or the adhesive tape, but rather a certificate of authenticity 14 pages with instructions for assembling it: when to change the banana (every seven or ten days) and at what height to place it (1.75 meters from the ground).
«Catelan’s banana is going to the Guggenheim!»celebrated the Perrotin gallery on its Instagram account. “We are grateful to receive this donation, yet another demonstration of the artist’s deft connection to the history of modern art,” Guggenheim director Richard Armstrong told the New York Times. The chronicle of this newspaper was titled like this: «It’s a banana. It’s art. And now it is the Guggenheim’s problem.
Cattelan elevates the everyday object to the realm of art, following in the footsteps of the Dadaist and of Warhol (and his Campbell’s soup cans)for whom the idea, or the concept, was of utmost importance, even more important than the creation process. In many ways, ‘Comedian’ is a self-portrait of this ‘enfant terrible’, Maurizio Cattelan: a work achieved through provocation, humor and profanity. In his retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, his works hung suspended in the rotunda.
Maurizio Cattelan is one of the greatest provocateurs of contemporary art. He has persistently disrupted the art world’s ‘status quo’ in significant, irreverent and often controversial ways. He has exhibited in the most important museums in the world: the MoMA in New York (1998), the Pompidou Center in Paris (2000), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (2003), the Louvre Museum in Paris (2004) and the Menil Collection of Houston (2010). He participated in the Venice Biennale (1993, 1997, 1999, 2002 and 2011) and the Whitney Biennial (2004). His auction record was established in 2016, when ‘Him’ sold for 17.2 million dollars.
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