Actually, it itself (the banana) is not the asset. If an unknown homeless guy would try to do that, everyone would think he is on crack... It's the publicity & fame, that is key to the price.
Maybe it was the duct tape holding it to the wall. Why the buyer couldn't get better publicity by giving 1-1 million to 6 homeless strangers?
+ A banana that for years has stirred controversy in the art world sold for $6.2 million with fees at Sotheby’s contemporary art auction on Wednesday night. It became what is arguably the most expensive fruit in the world — though it will likely be tossed in a couple days. The banana is the star of a 2019 conceptual artwork, “Comedian,” by the noted prankster Maurizio Cattelan, which is intended to be duct-taped onto the wall. It comes with a certificate of authenticity and installation instructions for owners to replace the banana — if they wish — whenever it rots. Five minutes of rapid bidding that had started at $800,000 ended when the Chinese-born crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun placed the winning bid, besting six other rivals, which experts said was a sign that even a struggling market would spend big on spectacle “Returns in the market have been flat or decreasing over the last decade,” said Michael Moses, who tracks the investment potential of artworks for clients. “It’s a fascinating asset because you can get so much joy from it that people are willing to accept lower returns. Joy is not something to be messed with.” proved disruptive and a performance artist, David Datuna, ripped the fruit off the wall and ate it. At Sotheby’s, the banana returned with an estimate between $1 million and $1.5 million, but the final hammer price — $5.2 million, plus auction-house fees, for a total of $6.2 million — sextupled its low estimate. The work became a media sensation, appearing on the cover of The New York Post. Some critics were more generous than the tabloids. Writing in The New York Times, Jason Farago explained that the title “Comedian” is ironic — “for Mr. Cattelan, like all the best clowns, is a tragedian who makes our certainties as slippery as a banana peel.” Has Menopause Made You Ache All Over? There’s a Name for That. Do You Need to Take Magnesium Supplements? How to Add Extra Security Layers to Your Phone or Tablet Back then, the artist said he conceived of his work as a satirical jab at market speculation, asking the question, “On what basis does an object acquire value in the art system?” In a recent email interview, he added that, “The auction will be the apex of its career. I’m eager to see what the an
The actual Dole banana taped to the wall of Sotheby’s on Wednesday evening was bought earlier in the day from a nearby fruit stand on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for 35 cents. Running the stand was a man from Bangladesh who did not give his name and said that he was not aware that one of his bananas was selling for several thousand times its original price. “I bet the Sotheby’s staff absolutely can’t wait to stop having to listen to banana jokes and pretend like it’s the first time they heard them,” said the art adviser David Norman. “It has to be excruciating!” The banana also attracted scrutiny earlier this month, when a Sotheby’s executive, Michael Bouhanna, anonymously released a cryptocurrency named after the satirical artwork. Online traders accused him of using insider information from the auction house to financially benefit from the token’s rising price. Bouhanna denied the accusations, saying in a statement that he “chose to launch the token anonymously, not wanting to associate it with my personal profile or professional affiliations.” A few hours before the auction began, the cryptocurrency — known online as a memecoin because of its volatile value — had a market cap of nearly $214 million. (Bouhanna declined through a spokesman to say what his personal financial stake in the token was.) Last year he was charged with unregistered sale of crypto asset securities, as well as manipulative practices that created the false appearance of strong investor interest for his digital currencies. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also accused eight celebrities, including the actress Lindsay Lohan, with illegally promoting Sun’s cryptocurrencies. Sun has contested the charges, arguing in a court filing that the Commission misapplied the law and does not have jurisdiction. Sun was born in China and also has Grenadian citizenship, and he was for a time Grenada’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization. He still uses the honorific “his excellency” on the website of Tron. In interviews, he has said he became fascinated by the crypto business after studying at the University of Pennsylvania. He has spent millions on traditional and digital art in a collection that ranges from a 1947 sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, purchased at auction for $78.4 million in 2021, to a nearly $600,000 NFT of a pet rock. Image
A Spectacle in a Dim Sale Cattelan, 64, who in 2016 installed a solid-gold toilet in a bathroom at the Guggenheim Museum, and once duct-taped his own dealer to the wall of a gallery, has often criticized the art market, saying auctions are unfair to artists, who do not generally stand to benefit (except in publicity). “What bothers me is that after the first sale, the artist no longer profits as the work changes hands,” he said in an interview. “Auction houses and collectors reap the benefits, while the creator, who makes the very object driving the market, is left out.” The banana was the last of just 10 lots sold in the “Now” portion of Sotheby’s two-section contemporary art sale on Wednesday, which realized a total of $16.5 million, well above their $12 million combined top estimate. By comparison, the equivalent “Now” auction in 2022 — the last boom year for the art market — had 23 lots and raised $72.9 million. Moses, the financial analyst, said that buying the banana would be a risky bet from an investment perspective; few artworks dealing in shock value have seen positive returns on repeat auction sales. “The buyer needs to be bulking up on joy utility, because it’s not clear to me that this will be an addition to wealth utility,” he said.