If you’ve ever felt like you waste too much money on stuff you don’t need, I have some news that will probably make you feel better. This week, Justin Sun, the founder of cryptocurrency firm Tron, announced that he had purchased a banana for just over $6 million. Now, he plans to eat it.
It should be noted that this isn’t just any old banana. No, instead, it’s part of an art exhibit by famed artist Maurizio Cattelan, whose work has appeared in some of the most reputable galleries and museums in the world. Cattelan’s “Comedian,” which debuted in 2019, features the aforementioned banana stuck to a wall with duct tape, and has caused controversy and consternation throughout the art world, with some people calling it a savvy satirical joke and others referring to it as being the purview of “idiot artists, collectors, dealers, and critics.”
Now, Sun, who founded the DeFi token Tron in 2014, has emerged as the winning bidder in an auction of the art installation at Sotheby’s auction house that took place Thursday. Sun’s acquisition of the banana now makes it “arguably the most expensive fruit in the world,” the New York Times reports.
“I’m excited to share that I have successfully acquired Maurizio Cattelan’s iconic work, Comedian for $6.2 million,” Sun wrote on X. “This is not just an artwork; it represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community. I believe this piece will inspire more thought and discussion in the future and will become a part of history. I am honored to be the proud owner of the banana.”
If taping a banana to a wall doesn’t exactly seem like the apotheosis of creative achievement, the work has been referred to as a critique of the art market itself, designed to skewer whichever rube is dumb enough to purchase it. Indeed, in his 2019 review of the work, The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones wrote that the banana itself should not be mocked, as the banana itself is designed to mock “the market since it is patently not worth the price at which it is sold.” Jones added: “As Damien Hirst said, merchants are unpleasant people who sell shit to idiots.”
If this is, indeed, the point of Comedian, it appears that Sun has offered himself up as the latest willing victim of capitalist excess. After Sun has eaten the banana from Comedian, all he will be left with is a “certificate of authenticity” from Cattelan, which may accrue in value over time. So, basically, he’s paying $6 million for a slip of paper.
But then, people like Sun (that is, the denizens of the DeFi and web3 communities) seem to have structured their entire lives around spending vast sums of money on things of negligible value. After all, Comedian is strikingly similar—in both form and function—to the NFT craze that took the crypto world by storm several years ago, which—like Cattelan’s “certificate of authenticity”—asked consumers to shell out millions for what was little more than a slot in a decentralized database. In Cattelan’s case, his work may continue to be valuable, given his status as one of the art world’s most mercurial figures. When it comes to NFTs, however, the market has obviously shifted, leaving those who shelled out fortunes for them with little but a cratered bank account.
Read the full article here
