Conceptual work created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan was sold at auction in New York last week

Conceptual work created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan was sold at auction in New York last week

The cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun has fulfilled a promise he made after spending $6.2m (£4.88m) on an artwork featuring a banana duct-taped to a wall – by eating the fruit.

At one of Hong Kong’s priciest hotels, Sun, 34, chomped down on the banana in front of dozens of journalists and influencers after giving a speech hailing the work as “iconic” and drew parallels between conceptual art and cryptocurrency.

“It’s much better than other bananas,” Sun, who was born in China, said after getting his first taste. “It’s really quite good.”

  • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
    22·
    28 days ago

    Honestly, there are so many things to be mad at Justin Sun for, but this is a tempest in a tea cup.

    The artwork itself was intended to be ephemeral. The banana inevitably rots. Eating it is, arguably, participating in the artist’s intent. The work was itself a play on the insanity of the high art world. Buying a piece of art just to destroy it is a perfect way to engage with that.

    And the artist got paid. A creative person doing creative work made money in a world where so much creativity is being ground down to dust or offloaded to machines.

    I’d rather focus on being mad at Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and all the other billionaires. This is a million miles from being the real problem.

    • CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
      4·
      28 days ago

      That banana in the photo looks pretty damn fresh to me, how does that work when it’s been some time since the piece was created?

      • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
        7·
        28 days ago

        The artist replaces the banana. The art is the concept of the banana on the wall, not the banana itself.

        It’s like any art that involves water, like a fountain. You can replace the water and it’s still art.

        I’m curious if the artist will continue to replace the banana or if they consider their art to be consumed now.

        • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
          5·
          28 days ago

          I think someone else mentioned that the sale included “instructions” on replacing the banana. Which is obviously a joke, but the whole thing is obviously a joke. There’s a real “My grandfather’s axe / ship of Theseus” thing going on there.

          • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
            3·
            27 days ago

            Yeah, art is weird like this. It’s not the first time someone has created low-effort garbage and sold it for more than its value. It won’t be the last either. But, it’s fun to observe and react to it.

            • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
              3·
              27 days ago

              I think calling this “low effort” maybe misses the point. Don’t think of this as an artwork in the classical painter sense, but rather as a performance. The effect comes from the process as much as from the result.

              And yes, it’s easy to say that there was no skill or craft in the performance, but that too is part of the point. Sometimes it not that no one else could do this; it’s simply that no one else did.

              In a sense you’re right that this is intentionally low effort. But I think that also dismisses the creativity, insight, and brazen audacity it took to actually pull this off.