“The world’s most expensive banana” sold Wednesday night at Sotheby’s New York. That’s how auctioneer Oliver Barker put as he was trying to eke out the last of the bids for Maurizio Cattelan’s viral artwork, Comedian (2019).
The famed artwork, of a banana duct-taped to a wall, hammered at $5.2 million, with the final price (including buyer’s premium) being $6.24 million. It went to a client of Jen Hua, Christie’s senior vice president, deputy chairman of Asia, chairman of China. Shortly after the lot sold, Sotheby’s revealed Justin Sun, the Chinese billionaire and founder of cryptocurrency platform TRON, to be the buyer; since 2021, he has been a major buyer at auction.
Cattelan’s Comedian first made waves five years ago at Art Basel Miami Beach, where the first of the work’s three editions sold for $120,000 by Perrotin. The gallery parted with the second edition for the same figure shortly afterward, before hiking the price by $30,000 for the third banana that was bought by the Guggenheim Museum.
On Wednesday, during its New and Contemporary Now auction, Sotheby’s sold the second edition of Comedian, which sold for more than four times its $1.5 million estimate. The bidding was fierce as Barker was able to raise the price over the course of about 10 minutes, with bids coming from both online, by phone, and in the room.
As the house’s chairman for contemporary art, Grégoire Billault, told ARTnews ahead of the sale, this is apparently one of more than 1,000 articles about the banana. Writing in ARTnews when the work debuted in 2019, Andrew Russeth quipped, “For many, Comedian is an object lesson in the excesses of the art world, the absurdity of the art market, and the gaping wealth inequalities that now define the global economy. That’s all true and fair. In fact, pretty much any criticism you lob at the banana sticks: it’s lazy, it’s cynical, and it’s not even very original (whatever that means).”
The hype, as its eventual price tag confirms, is not real. But he was clear to point out that it was not without precedent in art history, drawing a connection to Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), which “sent shockwaves through the art world at the time” when the readymade urinal was first exhibited in New York over a century ago. (A version of Fountain sold at Sotheby’s 30 years ago for $2 million.) But, Billault added, “because we live in a digital age, Comedian‘s waves have traveled far further.”
Before the sale, ARTnews asked Billault if she thought the banana’s $1.5 million high estimate was conservative given the artwork’s publicity. “Let’s see where we land on Wednesday, but for me the genius of this concept defies valuation,” he said. It seems that he may have been right.
Updated, November 20, 2024, 8:12p.m.: This article has been updated with the information that Justin Sun was revealed as the buyer of the Cattelan work.
