To truly understand this we must explore the origins of the banana. In the case of this particularly phallic yellow fruit it was sold for 20p on a Manhattan street in New York City by a fruit seller called Shah Alam, who won’t be receiving a portion of the proceeds from it being sold on.
The 74-year-old’s fruit stand is located near the famous Sotheby’s auction house where he sells bananas for 20p each or 79p a bunch, or at least the American equivalent of that money since he plies his trade in the US.
One of the bananas he sold became the centrepiece of an art exhibit by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, who duct taped the curved fruit to a wall and called it ‘COMEDIAN’.
This isn’t the first time Cattelan has done this, as according to the New York Times he’s sold a banana taped to a wall for large sums of money in the past, but those pieces were eventually sold between $120,000 (£94,500) and $150,000 (£118,000). This time however, the bidding started at $800,000 (£630,000) before eventually being sold for an eye watering cost of $6.2 million (almost £5 million).
The banana buyer was one Justin Sun, a Chinese-born cryptocurrency guy, and after purchasing the particularly pricey source of potassium he promised that he would eat it and that’s exactly what he’s done.
At a very expensive hotel in Hong Kong and with plenty of reporters arrayed around him, Sun ate the £5 million banana, declaring it to be ‘much better than other bananas’.
After spending so much on it you’d hope so, and the banana buyer thinks that his consumption of the conceptual art will be part of the works history.
The Guardian reports that everybody who watched Sun eat the £5 million banana was provided with a duct taped banana so that ‘everyone has a banana to eat’.
This is apparently art. More specifically it’s a banana duct taped to a wall that was sold for an obscene price. (John Nacion/Getty Images)
He’s not the first person to buy a stunningly expensive banana taped to a wall from Cattelan, nor even the first to eat his excessive purchase.
In 2019 a banana he taped to a wall sold three times at Art Basel Miami before a performance artist called David Datuna peeled the banana off the wall before eating it.
Another banana was procured and taped to the wall in its place, with gallery officials saying the banana was an ‘idea’.
When the fruit seller Shah Alam was told how much the single banana he’d sold had been auctioned off for he cried saying: “I am a poor man. I have never had this kind of money; I have never seen this kind of money.”
Cattelan’s response to his tears was to say: “The reaction of the banana vendor moves me deeply, underscoring how art can resonate in unexpected and profound ways.
“However, art, by its nature, does not solve problems — if it did, it would be politics.”
Meanwhile, Sun said that that he found Alam crying ‘poignant’ and claimed he would buy 100,000 bananas from the 74-year-old’s stall.
Yeah, sure, supermarkets might exist, and a chocolate bar can make for a far more fun on-the-go snack, but sometimes it’s much nicer to pick up a piece of fruit from your local.
And in this case, a simple piece of fruit became a pricey piece of art.
It all started on a street in Manhattan, New York, where Shah Alam runs a little fruit stand outside of Sotheby’s. You know, that famous auction house often used to flog things for millions.
The 74-year-old sells bananas for 20p each, or 79p a bunch, and sold one in particular, which ended up in an art piece by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.
Alam wasn’t aware of any of this though, so The New York Times tracked him down to explain what had come of one of his nanas.
Just a simple cheap bit of fruit, the banana was duct-taped to a wall to become part of Cattelan’s piece of conceptual art called ‘Comedian’.
It was then sold as a part of that by an unnamed collector for the massive price of £5 million. Founder of a cryptocurrency platform, Justin Sun, bought the piece, except not quite the actual piece.
Basically, Sun bought a certificate that gives him the right to also duct-tape a banana to the wall and then call it Comedian.
But still, it was Alam’s banana that ended up being the OG for the piece to get sold.
The widower from Bangladesh has been living in the US since 2007 and works at the stall four days a week in 12-hour shifts.
