Maurizio Cattelan’s iconic banana stuck to the wall with scotch tape is going up for auction for the first time with a starting estimate of at least one million dollars.
It is a mind-boggling figure for the work by the famous 64-year-old Padua-born conceptual artist and self-professed ‘joker’ that in 2019, causing a stir, was sold for over $120,000 amid countless controversies on the meaning of a work of art.
‘Comedian’, which Sotheby’s will offer to the highest bidder on November 20 in New York, is one of three editions of the banana that debuted in December five years ago at the major fair Art Basel Miami Beach.
The provocative artist’s piece has been imitated several times and in at least two cases even eaten, the last one last year in a museum in Seoul by a South Korean student who, after the fact, justified himself by saying “he was hungry”.
Source: Ansa News Agency