Let’s Talk About That Banana

From sacred relics to rotting fruit, the art world’s strange journey offers more than just a tasty bite.

Maurizio Cattelan, Comedian (banana taped to wall), 2019

The most talked about art work last year was an innocuous grocery store banana duct-taped – without much finesse – to a wall by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. Titled Comedian, the 2019 conceptual art piece comes with a certificate of authenticity and instructions on care and replacement when it rots. The 2nd of this limited three edition work was bought at auction in November 2024 by cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun for $6.2 million including buyer’s fees. Soon after, he ate this very expensive banana. Predictably, this theatre of performative lunacy on the part of the artist, Sotheby’s auction house, and the collector, was taken as evidence that the art world had indeed gone bananas. Author Brian C. Nixon wrote that it was “a commentary on the wild world of contemporary art, communicating how culture understands, interprets, and engages with the arts.”

How did we get from the serene Bodhisattva of Buddhist art to the rotting banana of Contemporary art?

It would be difficult to compress the entire history of art into this (or any) article – a task better left to wiser academics and scholars. To compress it in extremely broad strokes, suffice it to say for our purposes here, that there has not been a time in human history when art has not been created, and it has served a wide range of purposes and agendas over time. From the earliest very basic act of marking one’s presence, to decoration, documenting life, creating imagery for mythology and the supernatural, art was in a sense in service of society. Through a period of patronage from the church and crown, nobles and wealthy merchants, the artist belonged to a certain school, atelier or tradition and largely worked within the confines of stylistic and typological rules of an accepted canon. Of course, artists still found ways to innovate within the boundaries. Raja Ravi Varma went further, blending European romanticism with Hindu iconography to create original work that pays homage to more than one artistic and cultural tradition. As societies progressed and grew technologically advanced, forms of government changed and artists were no longer dependent solely on patronage. Nor were they bound to representing or narrating for an institution or higher authority of any kind, except by choice. Very quickly, artists moved from being the storytellers of a civilization’s traditions to breaking free of those limitations. They became critics of the very society and artistic culture from which they emerged. Many of the 19th and 20th century isms – Impressionism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, challenged whatever came before, and were constructed on manifestos and theories encompassing ideas from literature, linguistics, architecture and philosophy to opine on socio-political concerns. In the same vein, members of the Progressive Artists Group in Bombay sought to reclaim a post-colonial identity through Modernism, seeking a new vocabulary for Indian art which broke from European academicism.

Catellan’s banana is perhaps best understood as a direct descendent of the Dadaist movement which originated in Zurich as a reaction to the first world war and used satire, leaning towards the absurd, to critique dominant political and cultural ideology. The most well-known example of Dadaist art is Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 piece titled Fountain which was a store bought porcelain urinal hung upside down. Duchamp often repurposed readymade objects of mass production, to suggest that art was a “concept” rather than the “object” itself. Hence the term Conceptual Art.

Catellan has said that his 2019 Comedian, (the title itself announces that it is a spoof) is a “commentary on what we value.” In an earlier interview he posed the question: “On what basis does an object acquire value in the art system?” Does an everyday perishable become art to be gaped at because it is taped to a museum wall? Is a rotting fruit a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life? The act of its ingestion was a not at all subtle reminder that the money spent on its acquisition was literally going down the toilet in the morning. The publicity it generated led to a world-wide discussion about the meaning and value of art in an increasingly commercial world where it is bought and sold like a commodity. Didn’t the banana then achieve what every artist wants their art to: engage with an audience, hold up a critical mirror to prevailing norms, start a conversation.

Not convinced? You are not alone. It may help to ponder these words from the recently deceased filmmaker David Lynch as you consider the $6.2 million banana: “I don’t know why people expect art to make sense. They are fine with the fact that life doesn’t make any sense.”

(The author is an architect, writer, editor, and artist. Her column meanders through the vibrant world of art, examining exhibitions, offering critiques, delving into theory and exploring everything in between and beyond.)