Banana art buyer eats fruit at press conference
HONG KONG—A cryptocurrency entrepreneur who spent $6.2 million for a piece of conceptual art consisting of a simple banana, duct-taped to a wall, ate the fruit at a press conference on Friday, more than a week after his Nov. 20 purchase.
“It tastes much better than other bananas. Indeed, quite good,” Justin Sun, founder of cryptocurrency platform TRON, told the media gathered at the Peninsula Hong Kong, one of the city’s priciest hotels.
Titled “Comedian,” the duct-taped banana by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan was a phenomenon when it debuted in Miami in 2019.
This first version of the conceptual art was made with a banana that cost 25 cents.
The piece attracted so much attention that it had to be withdrawn from view in later exhibitions. At one point, another artist took the banana off the wall and ate it.
But three editions of “Comedian” had since been sold at $120,000 to $150,000.
‘Artistic experience’
The 2024 banana had a starting price of $800,000 that went up to $5.2 million, plus buyer’s fee.
Sun, 34, did not purchase the banana itself but, rather, the certificate of authenticity giving him the authority to duct-tape to a wall any banana he could find and also title it “Comedian.”
He made his winning bid at Sotheby’s auction in New York.
The South China Morning Post reported that the banana he ate was bought in Hong Kong.
“I will personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in both art history and popular culture,” Sun said.
‘Slippery system’
Cattelan, in an interview published on Nov. 22, described “Comedian” as a “provocation” and an invitation to appreciate the true value of art.
“It’s a provocation that invites us to reflect on the value of art and the dynamics of [this] market, pushing us to question what this work says about us as viewers,” the artist told Italian daily La Repubblica.
“It’s the market that has decided to take a banana stuck on the wall so seriously. If the system is so frail to slip on a banana skin, maybe it was already slippery,” Cattelan said.
Sun had said after his winning bid that the piece “represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community.”
