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Maurizio Cattelan's 'taped banana' has sold for $120,000 at Art Basel Miami Beach
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Maurizio Cattelan's new sculpture 'Comedian' at Art Basel Miami marks the artist's first major debut at an art fair in over 15 years (www.instagram.com/galerieperrotin/File)
T
he Italian artist debuted his latest sculptural intervention, "Comedian," at the renowned international art fair, which will run until December 8 at Miami Beach Convention Center.
For his new provocation, Cattelan duct-taped a banana sourced from a local Miami supermarket to the wall of the booth of the Perrotin gallery.
Gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin recently opened up about the genesis of "Comedian," which is the first new work that Cattelan debuts at an art fair in over 15 years.
"We had been discussing this work for a couple of months. Maurizio told me, 'I want to show a banana.' We discussed the best way to do it; Maurizio tried making it in resin, he tried it in bronze, but they just weren't right. In the end, he decided: The best solution was a real banana .... It looks like a joke, but step back and look at it again, and it becomes so much more," he told Artsy.
Like most of Cattelan's works, "Comedian" exists in an edition of three, plus two artist's proofs.
According to various art publications, two of the three editions of "Comedian" have been sold during Art Basel Miami Beach's VIP preview on December 4.
Read also: John Lennon's round sunglasses to be sold at auction
Both editions fetched $120,000, while Cattelan and Perrotin have since agreed to raise the initial asking price to $150,000.
As Artsy pointed out, Emmanuel Perrotin is planning on selling the third edition of "Comedian" to a museum.
When asked about how the banana would age, the gallery owner pointed out that the fruit can be replaced as owners of the work see fit.
The unexpected success of "Comedian" at Art Basel Miami Beach comes a few months after Cattelan made headlines for another of his works, "America."
The sculpture, which debuted in 2016 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, features an 18-karat gold toilet in functioning condition.
This past September, "America" was stolen from the historic Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England where it was on show as part of an extensive retrospective on the Italian artist.
Different reports value the sculpture at anywhere between $1.2 million to $6 million, with precious metal dealer Peter Pienta telling The Times that the sculpture could be hard to retrieve.
"That is a very, very valuable toilet .... If they had a refinery or gold smelting equipment ready, it could be melted into gold bars in days and there would be no way to trace them. They could really go into any place that would buy a bullion," Pienta added.
To this date, police remain on the hunt for the artwork, which has not been recovered.
