Every year there are new exhibitions, retrospectives, special installations, art fairs and biennale events to discover. Yet, at the end of every year, when you find yourself taking stock of what you saw, you usually realise there is one work that defined that particular year. In 2018 we were Banksy-ed at Sotheby's, 2019 will be remembered for Maurizio Cattelan's banana on a wall at Art Basel Miami.
At the beginning of December, the semi-retired Italian artist and prankster stuck a real banana to a wall in Galerie Perrotin's booth with a piece of duct tape. The work recalled a previous installation by Cattelan: in 1999 the artist taped indeed the Italian art dealer Massimo De Carlo to the wall of his art gallery.
According to a press release from the gallery, the banana was "Cattelan's first time debuting new work for an art fair in over 15 years."
The surprising artwork, which came with a $120,000 price tag (the banana is offered with a Certificate of Authenticity and buyers can replace the banana whenever they want or when it rots; so far there were at least three buyers who bought the limited-edition pieces of the banana at Art Basel), instantly became a successful work of art. A couple of days later performance artist David Datuna pulled it off the wall and ate it in plain sight, but soon a new banana replaced the previous one.
Eventually Galerie Perrotin had to remove it explaining that "the installation caused several uncontrollable crowd movements and the placement of the work on our booth compromised the safety of the artwork around us, including that of our neighbors."
Apparently, the simple composition comprising a yellow banana, stuck with grey duct tape on a white wall, was inspired by the fact that Cattelan had the habit of travelling with a banana and hanging it on his hotel room wall for inspiration.
But, somehow, the source of the inspiration for the Warholian banana didn't matter. The important thing about it was indeed the fact that it generated instant hype: posted and reposted on social media, it inspired other artworks, jokes, and multiple memes (write down #cattelanbanana in an Instagram search to get an idea).
Independent artists were very creative: Australian Leon Zhan started creating customised Nike Air Force 1s sneakers with a banana in the place of the Nike swoosh in July, and, for fun, he stuck a real banana on his sneakers, but soon further tributes started arriving.
Jacquemus taped a yellow micro Le Chiquito bag on a wall; Burger King France used "sculpture" to make a comparison between its price and that of one of its French fries.
Carrefour supermarket followed Burger King's example and created a campaign showing a series of its organic fruit and vegetables stuck to a wall with tape. More campaigns followed in the last few days by brands and companies advertising a variety of products including condoms and coffins (the latter by an infamous Rome-based funeral parlour known for its "fun" social media campaigns).
Now, it is interesting to note how in the world there are artists who have tackled rape, violence against women and gender issues creating works in conjuction with artisans or spending years researching a specific topic. Quite often these artists find it difficult to get grants and funds to develop their work further or to get represented by a gallery.
Hilarious, vapid and annoying, Cattelan's banana found instead immediate fame. But, in a way, it is only natural that it happened.
Cattelan's "Comedian" perfectly defines our society: while its simplicity and inflated price tag remind us that modern art has turned into a surreally absurd business and prove that we live in a deeply unfair and crazy world in which wealthy art collectors splash their money on a banana, Cattelan's duct-taped fruity sculpture tells us that art is not created nowadays to be enjoyed in museums, but to generate hype, and be shared, transformed, consumed - even eaten - and digested immediately and instantly on social media.
What's more surprising maybe is the fact that this lesson we learnt from art can be applied to other fields such as fashion: a hip product or trend are not created to be cherished and loved, but to be immediately shared, consumed, digested and forgotten to allow us to move onto the next one in an endless search for instant likes in a fast-moving digital world.
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