The news has already spread worldwide: Justin Sun, a Chinese collector and founder of the cryptocurrency platform TRON, has purchased Comedian (2019) by Maurizio Cattelan, the world’s most famous banana taped to a wall, for $6.24 million ($5.2 million hammer price, plus fees).
The artwork, initially estimated between $1 and $1.5 million, was sold during Sotheby’s "The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction" in New York on November 20, 2024.
Even before the auction, all signs pointed to a historic sale, starting with Sotheby’s announcement of the possibility of paying for the piece in cryptocurrency. This move signaled the auction house’s readiness to engage with the present and appeal to a new audience of collectors, especially now, with Bitcoin’s value soaring following Donald Trump’s re-election as U.S. President.
@dailymail A crypto mogul has devoured the $6.2 million banana art he purchased — and now he’s promised to buy 100,000 more bananas from the vendor who sold the original fruit to the artist. Justin Sun made global headlines for buying a provocative artwork by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan last week. The piece — dubbed the ‘most expensive fruit in the world’ — featured a 35-cent banana duct-taped to a wall. The 74-year-old fruit vendor who sold the banana for 35 cents to the artist outside Sotheby’s auction house in New York was stunned to learn how much the humble fruit fetched. To ease the vendor's shock, Sun pledged to buy tens of thousands more bananas and distribute them ‘free worldwide’ through his stand, ‘while supplies last.’ #art #banana #crypto #news ♬ Noticias - yagobeats
The sum reached was already incredible, and the media attention did the rest. Many prominent outlets such as The New York Times, Financial Times,The Art Newspaper, ART News, Artribune, Wired, la Repubblica, La Stampa, all emphasized the exceptional nature of the phenomenon surrounding the purchase: the silence was broken just minutes after the hammer fell – an action very far from the discreet manner typical of major collectors in the art world.
"I’m Justin Sun, and I’m excited to announce that I’ve managed to purchase the iconic artwork by Maurizio Cattelan, Comedian. This is not just an artwork; it represents a cultural phenomenon that connects the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community."
But it didn’t end there. On X, Sun shared his intention to eat the banana, an integral part of the artwork: "In the coming days, I will eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in art history and popular culture."
Until then, it might have seemed like a provocation. But today, during a press conference at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, Sun kept his promise, eating two bites of the world’s most expensive banana. And with it, perhaps, the absurd elitism of the art system. A system that Cattelan has always mocked, but which, having become one of the most famous and sought-after artists in the world, inevitably ended up representing.
One purchase, a few tweets, and a single gesture: that’s all it took for the entrepreneur to transform the artwork into something that conceptually closely resembles a non-fungible token. The value of the banana, more than as a physical object, is now more immaterial than ever: while it already existed as Cattelan’s intellectual property intervention, it now lives in the media frenzy generated by Sun.
In this sense, Comedian is a rare case of an artwork that was originally material and has now transformed into a digital asset. A coherent move that amplifies the conceptual impact of the piece.
A gesture that warns us: the world is changing, and with it, so is art. It is impossible to view the system through the same lens as before.
What has just unfolded is a narrative that feels like a performative artwork, with a conceptual twist worthy of Maurizio Cattelan’s early days. A narrative that promises to leave a mark, if nothing else, in the history of art. But this time, the author is a digital entrepreneur.