The latest outrage at Maurizio Cattelan&rsquo;s &euro;6.2 million banana brings the question of modern art to the fore again: is that art or the emperor has no clothes (but apparently a full crypto wallet)?

Probably not since Andy Warhol&rsquo;s serialised Cambell&rsquo;s Soup Cans in 1961 has a work pierced through the rarefied world of the art market and become a global cultural moment, top news, a blatant example of all that is silly, pretentious and how utterly disconnected from the real world modern art is. 
But Maurizio Cattelan, an Italian trickster and provocation entrepreneur, surely achieved that when he took a banana and some electrical tape, stuck said banana on the wall, named the piece Comedian and declared it art. That&rsquo;s ridiculous but for pretentious arties, predictable and somewhat standard fare. No, what sparked indignation and outrage was the price. When the auction hammer came down, &euro;6.2 million was paid for the soon-to-brown banana. 
And as far as the culture wars of late go (populism vs the elites) this was in the bucket of transgender athletes, pronouns and other scandals of the 2020s. Like Marcel Duchamps R. Mutt urinal (original now lost, estimated &euro;100 million); Banksy&rsquo;s self-shredding Love Is in the Bin (based on the Girl With The Balloon, 2021 auction price &euro;25.8 million); or Paul McCarthy&rsquo;s 24 m green butt plug titled Tree, installed in Paris&rsquo;s Place Vend&ocirc;me in 2014, a work that caused one of the biggest uproars in modern French culture history with the 69 year-old-artist assaulted; Comedian joins a long list of works that provokes. But is it art? And more glaring a question, how could it be worth that much? Let&rsquo;s take the first question, keeping the second one off the table for now. 
Let&rsquo;s use Banky as an example because, let&rsquo;s be honest, almost everyone can agree that Banksy is an effing badass. He started on the street, as a graffiti and stencil artist, as a rebel and risking getting arrested for his art. His intention was never for fame &mdash; to this day, few know his real identity &mdash; and almost all his art produced is public with him seeing no profit from it (in fact, he places many pieces so the sale of them may benefit the location like women&rsquo;s battered shelters etc.). And of course, topics like social justice and rebellion (Love is In the Air), climate change (Laugh Now) and our horrible politics (Devolved Politics) make Banksy a true hero and rock star who makes us laugh and think. Take our money now. 
For all those reasons, so too Cattelan and Comedian. Cattelan, working-class furniture maker turned self-taught artist; Catellan taking on the Catholic Church by showing a full-size replica of the pope hit by a meteor (La Nona Ora/Not Afraid of Love); Cattelan taking on fascism by showing a 7 m Nazi salute with four fingers hacked off to leave one middle finger sitting in front of the Milan stock exchange (L.O.V.E), a reference to the complicity of Italy&rsquo;s business sector in Mussolini&rsquo;s fascism. A solid gold toilet called America (which was stolen, hysterical). 
Comedian is a homage to Andy Warhol&rsquo;s brilliant Velvet Underground cover with a single banana for no good reason other than absurdity; it&rsquo;s a reference to Banksy&rsquo;s Pulp Fiction of Travolta and Jackson armed with bananas instead of guns. Above all, it&rsquo;s a performance art piece &agrave; la Jeff Koons&rsquo;s Equilibrium, basketballs in a fishtank series, one of which sold for USD 15,285,000, showing specifically how the art market is arbitrary, irrational and ridiculous. 
Comedian is the commentary on the silliness of the art market by being itself the commodity and transaction. Isn&rsquo;t that ironically brilliant? Like our favourite hip hop heroes, artists are vandals living life large, pimpin&rsquo; out our brains and taking the benjamins in. We&rsquo;ll leave the mechanics of the art market for another day, for now, go check out some great modern art, maybe even the ones I mentioned here and realise they are to our eyes and brain what punk rock is to our ears and heart.

The banana that ate the art world

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The banana that ate the art world

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