A Banana Taped to a Wall IS Art

In 2019, in Miami, an artwork was displayed, then later sold for 6.2 million dollars. This artwork made people question the very nature of art, the definition of value, and the bias within the art market, showing that there is beauty and value in everything, as long as you say there is.

The thing is, this isn’t The Last Judgement or The Scream, it’s actually a $0.30 banana taped to a wall with a $7.00 roll of duct tape. But Comedian wasn’t about the price; the real artwork was in the reaction: media outrage, think pieces, memes, the people who ate it, and Cattelan, the artist, predicted everything. While the banana rotted, conversation thrived.

Before deciding on a real banana, Maurizio Cattelan spent about a year developing and planning out his famous Comedian — better known as the 6 million dollar banana or the duct tape banana. He experimented with bronze, resin, and painted metal before finally returning to a real fruit.

Why was the banana such an issue anyway? Nobody gets mad at a $3,000 handbag with a fancy letter ‘G’ stamped to it, but a banana selling for $6.2 million? Suddenly, we’re all screaming about value, because we don’t hate absurdity; we just hate when it’s obvious.

What is conceptual art?

Conceptual art argues that the physical object is just a vehicle to get the meaning or message across. Just like how we value brands over fabric or diplomas over knowledge. The buyer didn’t actually pay for a banana; they bought a certificate of authenticity and a message. The item is replaceable. The message isn’t. That’s the meaning behind conceptual art: It challenges traditional definitions. Like Andy Warhol said, “Art is whatever you can get away with.”

Many critics view the artwork as a commentary on the absurdity of the art world, where the rich pay tons of money for ordinary items. It almost acts as a mirror, highlighting how collectors assign immense value to objects based on a certificate of authenticity rather than the physical object itself. My brother is a coin collector, and every Friday, he goes through the small bowl we have in our kitchen filled with the change from the week. He obsesses over dates, authenticity, and quality, over the fact that — rareness aside — he’s collected over $100s worth of coins in the past year alone. He’s 10 and already fallen into the cycle we all try to escape. Obsession. 

This world runs on invisible rules and values. Cattelan just made one of them obvious: bananas and duct tape are worthless unless you have enough influence to say otherwise. Because art evolves when society evolves. It stopped being about realism once cameras existed. It stopped being about skill once AI existed.

The message behind Comedian

The 2nd reason the banana made people so mad was the messages behind the artwork, which include the fact that life is fleeting, rich people like to flex money, and the art market is rigged. 

The rot

The fact that the banana rots and must be replaced adds layers of meaning about decay and impermanence. People often place value on the permanence of things; think about it, since the beginning of time, people have been trying to find ways to gain immortality. The fact that one of the highest-selling artworks in 2019 was a banana that rots is seen as a testament to the fact that nothing will remain in the end. No matter how much money you make or how many businesses you own, there will always be a day when people stop leaving flowers on your grave. The repeated eating of the banana by visitors or performers is seen by many as completing the artistic experience, further proving the point that Comedian is beautiful in its impermanence.

The price

The high price proves that people will pay anything if you say something is worth that much, and the media outrage proves that people will be angry with anything. In doing my research, I found a post titled Why The Banana Pisses Me Off by Maddie Exton, an artist and writer, that begins with the words, “Smug art achieves nothing,” and for another 400-ish words, she complains that she can’t make millions doing art because she’s stuck at a desk job. Maddie is attacking the bias within the art market using Cattelan as a punching bag without realizing that what she’s saying is what Comedian is saying too. While this is not an attack on Maddie, I did find it interesting and, frankly, very ironic. 

The rigged market

It’s no secret that the art market simply sucks; in fact, it’s so rigged and poorly run that I can’t even cover everything wrong with it, so I’m focusing on the lack of regulation and nepotism. No, these aren’t the only ways the art market sucks, but they are the ones that make me the most angry. 

When a market is unregulated or run by itself, it means there are no rules, so you might not even know who’s buying or what the price is. At auctions, you see people in the back paying millions they don’t have because they’re using a shell company (a business that only exists on paper), so their real identity doesn’t show up on the records. Over half of art sales happen in private rooms instead of public auctions where the final bid is broadcast; this means that the price stays secret to the public, and the people who own the artwork can just decide its worth $10 millions instead of $1 million, and no one can stop them because there are no public records. 

Along these lines is nepotism. Say your grandmother was Marilyn Monroe and your mother was an Olympic figure skater, you don’t have to wait for years to be recognised; if you throw a bucket of pain on a wall, give it a cheeky title, and suddenly you have a solo show while others are still trying to get one acceptance email. This isn’t because you’re skilled or innovative, necessarily, but rather because your grandma and mom are famous and skilled, so you are too—by societal standards. 

Maurizio Cattelan knew this. He was the exact opposite of a nepo baby, growing up in Padua, Italy, with a cleaning lady mother and a truck driver father, and is a self-taught artist. He stumbled into the art market, realized how screwed over it was, and forced us to look at it, yet many, like Maddie, are still pissed at him. He is fighting the same battle all artists are; he just has cameras on him while he does it. 

The effect on society 

And finally, Comedian exposed wires we weren’t supposed to see: the fact that we treat meaningless things as meaningful every day. Some examples of this are designer clothing (brands like Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci, and Prada), celebrities, bitcoin, NFTs, etc.

Designer scams

But on top of being priced based on names instead of actual value, many of these brands lie about manufacturing costs to be able to sell their products for more money and are even going so far as exploiting their workers — making it so they pay the least are get the most in return — according to an article written by The Wall Street Journal in 2024 titled ‘Raids Find Luxury Handbags Being Made by Exploited Workers in Italy’.

NFTs

For those who don’t know, NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique digital identifiers recorded on a blockchain that certify ownership and authenticity of a specific asset, typically digital files like artwork, music, or videos. If that makes no sense, don’t worry, I barely understand it myself. Think of NFTs like rare digital Pokémon cards; you can’t just trade them for normal digital Pokémon cards. You also have a digital receipt that says you own it, meaning that if someone takes a screenshot, it’s still yours because they don’t have the receipt, and everyone in the world can see that you own this Pokémon card on a giant list (called the Blockchain). NFTs are like owning a star. You don’t actually own it, and anyone can look at it and call it whatever they want, regardless of how much money you spend on it. It’s just spending money to say you can afford to spend money.

The questions we must ask

Ultimately, Comedian forced people to ask questions they didn’t want to. What is required for something to be considered art? If art requires skill, what about abstract art that can be achieved by simply tossing paint on a canvas? If art requires effort, what about minimalism, with the whole purpose being a lack of effort? If art requires permanence, what about the performing arts like ballet? If art requires beauty, who’s the judge?

We can argue over price tags and the simplicity of duct take until we’re in our graves. But the fact that a piece of fruit proves at least one thing: art doesn’t have to take years or be beautiful to tell a message. It just has to make you think, and for a week in Miami, everyone was thinking. Now, almost 7 years later, I want you to.