Miami
By now, almost everyone has heard of The Banana, Maurizio Cattelan’s sculpture that has brought down the ire of so many—glitterati and non-art-world types alike.
A quick recap for the uninformed: Art Basel Miami Beach, one of the biggest (not to mention sceneiest) fairs in the world, anchors the spate of parties, happenings, openings, concerts, performances, VIP events, very-VIP events, and occasional art fair that make up Miami Art Week. At the show’s VIP preview on Wednesday, The Banana was unleashed on the world—a simple piece of produce, sourced from a local market and duct-taped to the wall of the Perrotin gallery’s booth.
This work by Mr. Cattelan, an Italian artist known as a prankster, was scooped up for $120,000. Another edition quickly went for the same price. A third was later bought in the ballpark of $150,000. By the end of the weekend, two “artist’s proofs” of the work had also been acquired by museums (though the gallery declined to say which ones or how much they paid).
It takes a lot for something to register with the throngs of hedonists-in-collectors’-clothing who descend on South Florida, even more so given modern art’s long history of intentional provocation. It takes even more to make national headlines. But The Banana has done both.
“Bananas! Art world gone mad” blasted the front page of the New York Post, just one of many high-profile outlets that quickly jumped on the story. Talk of The Banana was everywhere. The “my-kid-could-do-that” argument was out in force. A man stood outside the fair trying to sell a banana taped to a canvas. Inside, a cafe had one taped to the wall behind its counter. Farther south, at the Scope Art Fair, artist Laurina Paperina attached a banana peel to the wall of a booth. Asking price: $1 million. And one visitor to Basel on Saturday, New York-based artist David Datuna, removed the Cattelan and made a quick snack of it before being escorted out. Fortunately, a bystander had another banana and the work was soon back on view, drawing lines to the booth throughout the day. So disruptive was the work that Perrotin actually removed it for the last day of the fair.
The Banana has been mocked and ridiculed as completely fatuous; the six-figure purchase price lambasted and held up as an example of the absurdities of income inequality; the whole saga held aloft as an overripe example of art world hubris. But allow me to state unequivocally that The Banana is good—and that is exactly why.
One could make the case that The Banana is just the latest offspring of Duchamp and a contemporary twist on his readymade. Or that food and decay have a well-established precedent in contemporary art— Yoko Ono’s apple on a pedestal (1966), Jana Sterbak’s dress made of meat (1987), Pope.L’s bologna-covered room (2017)—and that the work is “in dialogue” with these others. Or that it’s a trenchant commentary on biodiversity vis-à-vis the potential looming banana shortage threatened by a fungus ravaging the plant as a result of selective cultivation. But the work is none of these things, and they are not what make The Banana good.
Too easily lost in the commotion and over-intellectualizing about the work is the fact that The Banana is meant to be ridiculed. It exists to be mocked. Mr. Cattelan, after all, has a pedigree thumbing his nose at wealth and the elites. His “La Nona Ora” (1999), depicting the pope struck by a meteorite, was a disquieting meditation on power. “America” (2016), his fully functional gold toilet, was a prosecution of decadence. With this new work, he’s turned his critical eye on the art world itself—an institutional and market critique that should be a shock to the system for the indulgences of the contemporary scene, but probably won’t.
In this case, nothing could be more emblematic of a divorce from the reality of money than dropping $120k on a piece of fruit that will rot on your walls simply because the guy who put it there is semi-famous. And in that sense, apples to apples, The Banana could have been anything, because for buyers it’s not about the work itself but the acquisition of it, the ultimate example of the unbridled commodification that has defined the art trade since the 1980s.
The sheer absurdity of such a purchase, easily identified by people outside the art world, is a feature, not a bug, of the piece, laying bare what you might call the performative aspect endemic to so much collecting today. Buying art now is about being seen in the right circles and acquiring the right names. And, of course, about having enough discretionary income that spending $120,000 on a fruit doesn’t faze you. What, exactly, you are buying is secondary to the status conveyed by the acquisition itself.
Might those buyers have been in on the joke being made literally and figuratively at their own expense? Most likely—these are art-world VIPs, after all. But the chance to be inside the ruckus, to check a major artist of their “To Collect” list, to be one of the few who actually has an Original Banana was too tempting to pass up—critique be damned, grab the checkbook. The fact that there are multiple buyers only further proves Mr. Cattelan’s point.
The Banana could serve as a wake-up call for an art market that went mad long ago, but the prognosis isn’t optimistic. An art dealer I spoke to at Basel guessed that with all the publicity the works had already increased in value and were smart investments. But we should give Mr Cattelan his due for shining a light on the absurdities of the market. And even if the piece fails to instigate any real self-reflection, we can still appreciate the farcical hilarity of the entire spectacle. The work’s real title, “Comedian,” has proved apt.
Mr. Kelly is the Journal’s associate Arts in Review editor. Follow him on Twitter @bpkelly89.
Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
"Banana" - Google News
December 10, 2019 at 03:46AM
https://ift.tt/2RyFd94
In Defense of Maurizio Cattelan’s Banana - Wall Street Journal
"Banana" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2OTCtl5
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment