Fun Fact Friday - The Art World is Bananas

In 2019, Maurizio Cattelan displayed a piece at Art Basel Miami, and it grabbed headlines around the world. The artwork titled Comedian consisted of simply a banana duct taped to a wall. Cattelan was offering 3 editions of this work and actually sold two for $120,000 each. If that weren‘t enough, another artist at the show took the banana off the wall and ate it. David Datuna, a performance artist, performed an intervention he dubbed Hungry Artist consuming the banana that caused such a stir. Cattelan appears to have had a good sense of humor about the incident. Nobody pressed charges for vandalism or anything along those lines because the banana was not the point. Comedian was a conceptual piece, so patrons were not really buying a banana tapes to a wall. They bought a certificate of authenticity for the idea of taping a banana to a wall, so basically they paid $120,000 for an artwork made of a banana bought from a local grocery store for $0.30 and in the end, they may or may not actually get the banana. As always you can find more at www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com and if you enjoy the podcast, please follow Who Arted on Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.

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