“Comedian” So who’s the one being funny?

Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian”, a banana duct taped to a wall, has been in the news – as it was, of course, intended to be.

It is not a new work. It appeared in 2019 in an edition of three, the second of which was recently bought by a cryptocurrency entrepreneur, the stupidly rich Justin Sun.

Inevitably comparison is made with Marcel Duchamp‘s ready mades, especially his “Fountain” of 1917 – an upturned men’s urinal and signed “R. Mutt”. So let’s explore the comparison.

Duchamp’s gesture, like any artwork, must be placed in context, and the context in this case was as a submission to the Society of Independent Artists for an exhibition at the Grand Central Palace in New York. Apparently any artist who paid the fee would have their work accepted. The committee, therefore, did not reject the work as is sometimes said, but they simply did not exhibit it.

Duchamp thus took on the art world of the time. His “Fountain” questioned its aesthetics, exclusively and bourgeois nature. The established art world ignored it, but in the development of modernism in the arts it became iconic. The original was lost but an accurate replacement sold for a silly sum roughly a hundred years later.
It was also one of many 20th century invitations to accept the everyday world as a valid source for artwork. One thinks of John Cage, musique concrete, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and the whole pop art movement. Finding “found objects” is now encountered even in schools as an element in art education.

So what’s the difference with the banana piece?

There are various differences. The context for Cattelan’s “Comedian” is the 21st century art world’s self-referential culture of privilege, exclusivity and manufactured sensation and outrage. Whereas Duchamp challenged the art world of his time, Cattelan confirms it. Whereas Duchamp’s “Fountain” was ignored, Cattelan’s was calculated to create the media and social media ballyhoo it indeed has created. Whereas “Fountain” (at the time) had no value, “Comedian” sells for millions.

Over the course of just over a century the art world has therefore moved from being stuffy and easily outraged to being permissively libertarian – even neoliberal to the extent that it can monetarize anything, even a banana, it seems.

There is another context with Duchamp could not have known about and that is the world of social and instant news media. How many people might have seen Duchamp’s “Fountain” in 1917? A few? A dozen or so? Until it became notorious there would not have been that many, for sure. Cattelan’s banana, of course, has an audience of millions, prompting ironic parodies including taping other kinds of fruits to walls, taking pictures them and circulating them as memes.

Justin Sun ate the banana, for which he paid over 6 million dollars, at a press conference in Hong Kong, arrogantly demonstrating his attitude to money but perhaps illustrating also his attitude to art. This is a clear example of the rebellious becoming recuperated..

It could be argued that the banana piece satirizes the art world. If so, it doesn’t do it very well, nor with the wit of the Duchamp. Turning a urinal upside down renders it useless. Calling it “Fountain” obliquely references male pee. Signing it R. Mutt was defiant. Cattelan’s piece doesn’t quite have these layers although it may have an element of trickster in it.

Most of all, however, it illustrates the fact that what used to challenge now affirms the values, idiocy and ideological poverty of an art world now bereft of any defensible substance.