Probably the most talked-about lot of the New York public sale season, the duct-taped banana by Maurizio Cattelan, offered for a hammer worth of $5.2m ($6.2m with charges) at Sotheby’s New York after a seven-minute bidding conflict.
Comic (2019), which consists of a banana connected to a wall with silver duct tape, was essentially the most anticipated lot on Wednesday (20 November) at Sotheby’s The Now and Up to date public sale, devoted to the most recent works being offered by the public sale home this week. The successful bid far exceeded the public sale home’s $1m to $1.5m estimate.
Bidders drove the value as much as $5.2m earlier than a winner emerged, with a Chinese language purchaser on the cellphone with Jen Hua, the deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Asia, outdueling on-line bidders. Sotheby’s stated after the sale that the customer was Justin Solar, a Chinese language collector and founding father of the cryptocurrency platform Tron. Solar has beforehand bid on different splashy public sale tons, together with shopping for a $78m Giacometti sculpture at Sotheby’s in 2021 and, he claims, narrowly lacking out on Beeple’s record-breaking NFT (non-fungible token) earlier that very same 12 months.
Comic “represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of artwork, memes, and the cryptocurrency neighborhood”, Solar stated in an announcement by way of Sotheby’s after buying the lot. “I imagine this piece will encourage extra thought and dialogue sooner or later and can grow to be part of historical past.” Solar plans to eat the banana, he added, as a means of “honouring its place in each artwork historical past and widespread tradition”.
Sotheby’s stated earlier than the sale that the public sale home would settle for cryptocurrency for the work and confirmed that Solar can pay in crypto, although it didn’t specify which forex.
Sotheby’s auctioneer Oliver Barker opens the bidding on Maurizio Cattelan’s Comic (2019) Screenshot view YouTube
The lot, which got here to public sale backed by a assure, features a single roll of duct tape and one banana, the latter of which the public sale home has sourced from the fruit stand exterior its headquarters on York Avenue, the place Wednesday’s public sale was held. The winner of the public sale turns into the proprietor of a certificates of authenticity and particular directions by Cattelan for learn how to show the work.
When Cattelan debuted Comic at Perrotin’s stand throughout Artwork Basel Miami Seashore in 2019, it was his first “sculpture” in 15 years and he described the work as “a honest commentary and a mirrored image on what we worth”. The work shortly turned the most well-liked object on the occasion, and Perrotin took it down earlier than the tip of the truthful because of crowd considerations. Comic has been derided as each a consequence of art-market extra and lauded as a tongue-in-cheek image of its personal absurdity. The banana part of the work has been eaten whereas on show twice, first by a efficiency artist at Artwork Basel Miami Seashore and once more by a hungry artwork pupil on the Leeum Museum of Artwork in Seoul in 2023 (when knowledgeable of the latter incident, Cattelan stated it was “no downside in any respect”.)
Perrotin offered three editions of the work in the course of the truthful in 2019, priced between $120,000 and $150,000. The version offered at Sotheby’s beforehand traded palms privately, in keeping with the public sale home. One other has been acquired by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
