So a banana duct taped to a wall sells for over $6 million at auction recently. This sort of thing is hardly news these days. I seem to recall a glass vial full of elephant urine sold for a tidy sum a number of years ago. I point out this most recent example because it simply suggests an established trend continues today. Now that we have years worth of examples of uber wealthy people purchasing simple objects that have been passed off as art, we should begin to have some answers to the questions a lot of folks have been asking for some time. Namely:
Who the hell is shelling out for this shit?
Why don’t they just duct tape their own banana to their front hallway, pound their own six inch nail into a two by four, or glue a photo of Madonna to a paper towel roll themselves and dispense with the whole seven figure auction business?
Be honest…you KNOW the “artists” are taking folks with too damned much money for a ride at their expense. I mean the joke’s on THEM, right?
Buyers are entitled to privacy regarding their purchases You wouldn’t want everyone to know how you spend your money, would you?
Why don’t they just duct tape their own banana to their front hallway, pound their own six inch nail into a two by four, or glue a photo of Madonna to a paper towel roll themselves and dispense with the whole seven figure auction business?
Because they aren’t artists. They’re merely rich people who have the money to buy avant-garde art if they happen to like it.
Be honest…you KNOW the “artists” are taking folks with too damned much money for a ride at their expense, right?
Most working artists barely get by, so the fact that someone has sold a piece that makes a lot of money is quite newsworthy. Perhaps the buyer thinks they can sell it for more money in 20 year, so they aren’t getting ripped off by some artist.
I think your second point is actually closer to the truth than you may think. I believe that what was actually auctioned off was the right for the buyer to tape a banana to a wall and “officially” use the title “Comedian” to refer to it. It’s sort of like buying the right to make a photocopy of an original art piece and refer to it as the original.
It was a urinal that he decided to call art. And like it or not, he made a good case for it. This was in 1917, which is to say this sort of agita has been going on for a while. I am frankly untroubled by it and even a bit amused.
At the far end of the argument, I think it’s fair to say that pieces like Fountain and Comedian succeed as art on some level. We’re talking about them. People feel strongly about them, even if that feeling is disgust or incredulity. They’ve caused people to think.
Remember, art doesn’t have to be pretty or attractive. Some of the best art is horrific or causes us to experience conflict. You don’t have to like a piece of art for it to be meaningful. And you’re free to decide it isn’t meaningful, too. But the artist made you think about it.
That’s a real banana, right? That piece of art is going to be a goopy mess of putrescence in a few weeks. My firm policy is, if I pay $6 million for something, it should last at least a year.
He was right, but the unspoken part is "in a society with wealth stratification so extreme that the wealthy are simply out of opportunities for display."
With extreme stratification, those at the top compete against their few peers to be the most obscene and grotesque in their displays. Status accrues to those who waste most extravagantly (as in the Robber Baron-era practice of lighting one’s cigar with rolled-up hundred dollar bills—in a time when $100 was a huge amount of money).
Today’s economy puts the robber-baron era to shame in its level of stratification. And of course it’s moving fast in the direction of larger and larger gaps between the top one percent and the rest of us.
That, or conspicuous consumption at the billionaire level. Some people basically want to brag, “I’m so rich I can drop millions on pointless shit, while you peasants are starving.” It might also impress some of the smaller, less dominant billionaires.
Oh, no. It can replaced as needed. Or not. In fact this is like the fourth iteration. The original was eaten by a fellow artist. Version 2 and 3 were sold for $120,000 and $140,000. The buyer does not even get the one on display. What he bought is a certificate that enables him to place his own banana and duct duct on a wall of his choice and call it, “Comedian”. Remember, the buyer is a crypto-king so the idea of making value out of nothing is perfectly normal to him.‘’
I should also remind people about Banksy’s famous wall art exhibit that shredded itself (by design) just after the gavel dropped - while it was hanging on the wall of the auction house.
In this case, we know. The artist meant for this to be a “…a satirical jab at market speculation” according to the NY Times article on this. Unfortunately, art is irony-proof.