While you can buy a banana for less than $1 at your local supermarket, a banana duct-taped to a wall might fetch over $1 million at an upcoming Sotheby’s auction in New York. The artwork, titled Comedian, by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, originally made waves at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019. It consists of a simple yellow banana attached to a white wall with silver duct tape—an image that provoked widespread discussion and intrigue.
Initially, many wondered: Is it a prank, a statement on the contemporary art world, or something more? At the time, a performance artist even removed the banana and ate it, prompting the replacement of the fruit. Despite the commotion, Comedian sold three editions of the work for between $120,000 and $150,000, according to Perrotin Gallery.
Now, Comedian has an estimated auction value of $1 million to $1.5 million at Sotheby’s on November 20. David Galperin, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art, describes the piece as both profound and provocative. “What Cattelan is really doing is turning a mirror to the contemporary art world, questioning how we assign value to art and what we define as art,” Galperin says.
However, bidders won’t be purchasing the original banana—it’s long gone. Instead, they will receive a certificate of authenticity, which allows them to replicate the banana and duct tape as an original work by Cattelan.
The title Comedian hints that Cattelan himself may not have intended for the work to be taken entirely seriously. Chloé Cooper Jones, assistant professor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, suggests that the piece might be more than just a joke. “Cattelan’s work often sits at the intersection of humor and the deeply macabre,” she says. “It’s not just about provoking for the sake of provocation but prompting us to confront darker aspects of history and our own lives.”
The banana itself holds symbolic weight. “It would be hard to find a better symbol of global trade and its exploitations than the banana,” Cooper Jones notes. If Comedian is a commentary on the ethics of global trade, particularly issues like imperialism and labor exploitation, it adds depth to what might otherwise be perceived as an absurd artwork.
As Comedian heads to auction alongside a Monet painting with an expected value of $60 million, Galperin draws a parallel to art history: “No important, meaningful artwork of the past century didn’t provoke discomfort when it was first revealed.”
Ultimately, Cattelan’s work forces viewers to consider the value they place on art and the often uncomfortable truths behind the objects they take for granted.
