How a Duct-Taped Banana Sold for $6.2 Million

2 months ago 40

Art & Design|Peeling the $6.2 Million Banana: An Auction Explainer

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/arts/design/banana-auction-explainer-cattelan.html

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Answers to six immediate questions you might have about the art world after a crypto entrepreneur spent millions on a 35-cent fruit.

An auction house with an auctioneer and banana duct-taped to the wall.
When is a banana not a banana? When it’s a work of art. At Sotheby’s auction on Wednesday night, the conceptual work by Maurizio Cattelan hammered for $5.2 million, or $6.2 million with fees.Credit...Sotheby's

Zachary Small

Nov. 21, 2024Updated 5:05 p.m. ET

It wasn’t just a banana. It was a banana with a back story.

The spectacle on Wednesday evening, when a Sotheby’s auctioneer in Manhattan warned potential bidders not to let Maurizio Cattelan’s fruity artwork “slip away,” ended with a duct-taped banana selling for an astonishing $6.2 million, with fees.

A crypto entrepreneur named Justin Sun placed the winning bid from Hong Kong, adding Cattelan’s 2019 conceptual artwork, titled “Comedian,” to the quirky collection he has amassed over the last few years that includes a Giacometti sculpture, a Picasso painting and a very expensive NFT of a pet rock.

But winning the auction is really just the beginning of the negotiations that will take place over the next month or so (a buyer typically has 30 days to pay, by which time the banana will inevitably blacken and rot). In a phone interview this week, Sun said that he intended to pay for the banana with his own invented cryptocurrency; however, Sotheby’s might only accept payment through more popular forms of digital payment like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Here are six questions you might have after seeing the ultrarich wave millions around for a piece of fruit — one that might well spoil from its own success.

Image

Justin Sun, a crypto entrepreneur and art patron.Credit...Steven Ferdman/Getty Images

Contrary to the crypto entrepreneur’s statement that he intended to “personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience,” it would be unlikely that the actual banana presented at Sotheby’s would survive the plane ride to Hong Kong, even if refrigerated.


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