‘Banana on the Wall’ controversial installation art auction… “Estimated price: 2 billion won”

Delivery time2024-10-27 20:48

Maurizio Cattelan‘s ‘The Comedian‘… In 2019, it was sold for about 100 million won.

‘Eating’ incident during exhibitions in Korea and the US… Receive bananas and certificate when purchasing

Maurizio Cattelan ‘Comedian’

[AFP=연합뉴스 자료사진]

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Lim Ji-woo = Auction house Sotheby’s announced on the 25th (local time) that the work ‘The Comedian’ by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, who attracted attention by being known as the ‘100 million won banana‘, will be auctioned.

According to CNN, Cattelan’s hit work ‘The Comedian’ will find a new owner at an auction held at Sotheby’s headquarters in New York on the 20th of next month.

The expected selling price is estimated to be around $1 million (about 1.4 billion won) up to $1.5 million (about 2 billion won).

This work, which Cattelan first presented at an art fair held in Miami, USA in 2019, is an installation art in which a banana is attached to the wall with duct tape.

This work was made of a total of three pieces, two of which became a hot topic when they were each sold to private collectors for $120,000 (approximately 160 million won).

The sale price of the remaining piece was kept secret, but it is known to have been sold at a higher price.

It was one of these three pieces that was up for auction this time, and the seller was not revealed.

Those who purchase the work will receive a roll of duct tape, a banana, a certificate of authenticity, and an official guide to installing the work.

Sotheby’s told CNN that both the tape and the banana that buyers will receive are different from what was originally on display.

“‘The Comedian’ is a conceptual work of art, and the actual physical materials are changed for every exhibition,” a Sotheby’s spokesperson explained in an email to CNN.

There was a debate in the world about the value of this work, which presented an ordinary banana as a work of art.

Some critics say that this work follows the tradition of conceptual art that began with Marcel Duchamp’s work ‘Fountain’, which previously displayed a urinal in an art museum.

A cloud of visitors flocked to the Miami Art Fair in 2019 to see this ‘problem work’, but the work became a hot topic again when an American performance artist ripped off a banana attached to the wall and ate it in front of hundreds of visitors.

The artist who ate the banana insisted that his actions were separate acts of art and not vandalism.

Later, in an interview in 2021, Cattelan said that ‘The Comedian’ is a work that is subject to commentary, and explained that the work is not just a joke, but “a reflection of what we value.”

This work was later exhibited at Maurizio’s solo exhibition held at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul last year, and at the time, a college student ate a banana attached to the wall, making it a hot topic both at home and abroad.

At the time, the museum later replaced the banana with a new one and displayed it.

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2024/10/27 20:48 Sent