In what I’d call a rather ‘fruitful’ exhibition, Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan sold a banana, duct taped to a wall for $120,000. That’s ₹85 lakhs to you and me.
He had purchased it for $0.30.
This is the same guy who designed the very popular golden toilet seat, which was offered to US President Donald Trump earlier in 2019.
The piece of art is named ‘The Comedian’ by the artist (makes sense) and has 3 editions. Two of them have already been sold for $120,000, while the third is expected to make him $150,000.
When asked about his thought behind creating this piece, Cattelan said:
Wherever I was traveling I had this banana on the wall. I couldn’t figure out how to finish it. In the end, one day I woke up and I said ‘the banana is supposed to be a banana’.
Those are not words I thought I will read when I woke up this morning; but I guess life is like that.
Anyhow, the willingness of people to pay so much money for a piece of banana stuck to a wall, has started a conversation on wealth and taxes on Twitter.
Maybe, this was exactly the message he wanted to put out. Maybe he genuinely thought of it as art.