(Credit: Wikimedia / Art Basel)
On November 29th, crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun fulfilled his recent promise to eat the ‘Comedian’ artwork of a banana duct-taped to a wall for $6.2 million.
Just last week, Sun purchased Maurizio Cattelan’s artwork showcasing a banana duct-taped to a wall for $6.2 million in New York. ‘Comedian’ first became a viral sensation in 2019 and was created by Cattelan to satirise the art community and lampoon the enormous value attached to seemingly vacuous pieces. He once explained his general message: “On what basis does an object acquire value in the art system?”
The artwork was sold at Sotheby’s on November 20th, and is one of three editions that Cattelan created in 2019, albeit featuring a different banana. It was initially expected to raise between $1 million and $1.5 million.
When the three editions of ‘Comedian’ were first traded in 2019, they fetched between $120,000 and $150,000, which raised eyebrows in the art community but proved Cattelan’s point by increasing their value. The New York sale to Sun further affirms this; the banana that featured in the piece sold last week was bought earlier in the day for only 35 cents from a market stall.
Sun purchased ‘Comedian’ online watching from his Hong Kong home. In addition to receiving the banana and roll of duct tape, he was also given a certificate of authenticity and an instruction manual on replacing the fruit when it eventually rotted. As well as maintaining that ‘Comedian’ is “not just an artwork”, Sun revealed that he would eat the banana when it arrived in Hong Kong, reasoning that it is his method of “honouring its place in both art history and popular culture”.
In a function room on November 29th at the Peninsula Hotel, one of Hong Kong’s most lavish hotels, Sun made good on the pledge. He gave a speech to journalists and influencers, celebrating the work as “iconic” and illustrating parallels between conceptual art and cryptocurrency. As a souvenir, each attendee received a roll of duct tape and a banana.
“Everyone has a banana to eat,” Sun said, according to The Straits Times. “It’s much better than other bananas,” he added after his first bite. “It’s really quite good.”
“Eating it at a press conference can also become a part of the artwork’s history,” he asserted during the surreal conference. Comparing ‘Comedian’ to NFTs and decentralised blockchain technology, he said: “Most of its objects and ideas exist as (intellectual property) and on the internet, as opposed to something physical”.
Elsewhere this week, Sun revealed a $30 million investment in World Liberty Financial, a crypto project supported by incoming US President Donald Trump. In 2023, Sun was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, who claimed he and his companies engaged in fraudulent activity to inflate the price of his cryptocurrency TRON and BTT Tokens, as well as selling unregistered securities.
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