On Monday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief talks about the expensive banana duct-taped to a wall, which a New York Times art critic has called “a sculpture.” Video and partial transcript below:
[Artist Maurizio Cattelan] taped a banana to a wall — it sold for $120,000 at Miami’s Art Basel Festival this week. If you want to say that we are in the final stages of a civilization, this would probably be a good indicator.
[As the Daily Wire previously reported]:
A contemporary art piece titled, “The Comedian,” which sold for a staggering $120,000 at Miami’s Art Basel Festival earlier this week, is now in a different artist’s stomach, according to reports…
On Saturday, another contemporary “artist” decided to make his own show of the duct taped banana, peeling the fruit off the wall and consuming it in front of a crowd of horrified onlookers.
Here is what this looks like, he just goes right for it. He peels it off the wall, and eats the banana. He calls it “Hungry Artist.”
It took some work for [artist David Detuna] to find the banana. It was removed from public display, after Art Basel concluded earlier this week, and relocated to a gallery. Detuna was also given incredible leeway for his stunt. According to CNN, he actually conversed with several patrons, who were treating his efforts with utter seriousness.
Because this was, in fact, a work of art.
Cattelan worked on his art for a year, according to the press release from the gallery where Cattelan’s banana was being exhibited for sale, and the gallery claims it has sentimental value to the artist.
Apparently, the good news is that it’s easy to replace the banana. Shocking! You can get it for under a dollar anywhere in the United States. Don’t worry — it’s art, though. It’s definitely, definitely art. It’s not the decline of art, it’s not the decline of Western civilization, it’s not the fact that we have too much money apparently being held by — Like you want to turn me into a Bernie Sanders socialist, tell me someone paid one $120,000 for a banana duct-taped to a wall. That would be the answer, right there, solid stuff.
The death of art definitely has taken place in real time, which is why you go to a modern art museum and you’re like “My kid could paint that.” Right — your kid could paint that, this is correct, because art has been completely separated from skill. It’s the message of the art that matters — the message. And once the art becomes about the message, not about the actual art — the art is supposed to be universal in the sense that it’s supposed to have meaning for everyone who takes a look at this. You know what this means — this duct-taped banana to a wall — it means that everyone’s a moron. So I guess it achieves that effect, achieves that purpose.
The art critic over at The New York Times defended this thing and said, [paraphrasing] “No, no, it is indeed art.” [Jason Farago writes “A (Grudging) Defense of the $120,000 Banana].”
Art may be long, and life short, but the existence of a hand fruit is most ephemeral of all. This week at Art Basel Miami Beach, the art world’s premier champagne-steeped swap meet, no works drew more grins, guffaws and selfies than a new sculpture by the semiretired Italian trickster Maurizio Cattelan: a banana duct-taped to a wall, its peel already speckled with brown spots….
For when it comes to the bananas ontological status as art or produce, I thought we had settled this already. If you buy a light work by Dan Flavin and the fluorescent bulb starts flickering, you can replace it with a new one. If you buy a Sol LeWitt wall drawing and you move house, you can erase the old one and draw a new one. A banana, even more than a light fixture, was always going to require replacement; Mr. Cattelan had already drawn up instructions for the lucky collectors to replace the fruit every week to 10 days.
As to why Mr. Cattelan’s banana has gripped the public imagination, it has something to do with the price…Something to do, also, with the comic potential of bananas. Well, is it art? Is Mr. Cattelan taking us for a ride? Did you have to be there?
….Let me reassure you, you are not a hopeless philistine if you find this all a bit foolish. Foolishness, and a deflating sense that a culture that once encouraged sublime beauty now only permits dopey jokes, is Mr. Cattelan’s stock in trade. But perhaps you’ll find more to appreciate in Mr. Cattelan’s work if you take note of two points: one formal, one social.
First, I’ve been dismayed to discover that for a work that has been endlessly photographed and parodied over the course of its one-week life, almost no one has discussed that it is not just “a banana.”….[It] is a sculpture, one that continues Mr. Cattelan’s decades-long reliance on suspension to make the obvious seem ridiculous and to deflate and defeat the pretensions of earlier art —
Okay, fire this guy. Seriously, fire the critic, fire the artist, fire everyone. The culture that produced the Sistine Chapel has now produced a man duct-taping a banana to a wall. The culture that produced Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms has now produced a piece of fruit that is rotting on a wall taped there with duct tape, and we are supposed to believe that this is a deep and profound commentary on American culture.
The only commentary in American culture is that anybody took this thing seriously in the first place. It’s ridiculous on its face, and the fact that nobody aspires anymore. Instead, we just find joy in mockery — that nobody aspires anymore. Maybe that’s the only thing it has to say about our culture — maybe that was Cattelan’s point. It ain’t worth $120,000, I just gave it to you for free, so enjoy.
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