This is Bananas

In November of 2024, a banana that had been duct-taped to a white plaster wall sold for $6.2 million at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Auction. Conceived as an edition (a series) of 5, titled “Comedian,” the artist Maurizio Cattelan had instructed buyers to change the banana and duct tape when the banana gets brownish, or, conversely, to replace the banana as quickly as possible if it is eaten. Three such banana installations, living pieces of fruit/banana sculptures, HAVE been eaten, including the $6.2 million banana, by the buyer himself, shortly after the hammer came down at Sotheby’s. It sold to a Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur. A Korean student peeled and ate one of the series of banana fruit sculptures, still taped to the wall, at a museum.

As always in the dollar-hungry art world, marketing moguls at Chiquita Banana conjectured that the most fashionable and famous art show in the world – Art Basel Miami Beach (which closed last week) – was an opportunity to capitalize on the uproar engendered by Sothebys’ sale of a $6.2 million living/piece of fruit/banana installation two weeks before Art Basel Miami Beach opened in early December. Chiquita’s cute yellow and blue pair of banana carts – offering free bananas, swag, and photo ops – promised something “fun.” This caused a critical uproar in the Press and particularly among activists, who sought to direct the public’s attention to the world’s nearly one billion malnourished people, and to Chiquita’s history of questionable labor practices. The banana shaped/themed prizes, such as a 1970s style bright yellow and blue logoed gym bag, however, won over the 80,000 attendees; banana food samples added to the “fun,” and soon long lines formed for the Chiquita blue and yellow street-vendor bike-style banana stations. The labels on each of the free bananas combine the coiffed, fruit-bowl hatted Carmen Miranda style figure with the copy “Chiquita! Proud Partner to Art Basel Miami Beach.” 

Founded in 1970 by gallerists from Art Basel Switzerland, Art Basel Miami is the world’s premier Modern and contemporary art fair. I attended first in 2005 and saw the glitterati artists, gallerists, and fashionista celebrities in fabulous outfits, which all had become more ostentatious when I returned in 2017. Not only does each international large bank/design corporation/financial institution have a wine, chocolate, or coffee booth manned by super-good-looking types in Gucci, but the event takes over the entire city of Miami. 

For example, at Florida International University, the Wolfsonian Museum has restored the scandalous 1928 stained glass window created by iconic Irish artist Harry Clark (1891-1931). Called the Geneva Window, it was commissioned to celebrate the newly formed Independent Irish Free State as a gift to the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. When unveiled in Ireland, the Irish Government, highly nationalistic and Catholic at the time, turned it down because the likenesses of celebrated Irish literary figures portrayed characters who were drunk, sexualized, naked, and Protestant (many writers at the time in Ireland were not Catholic).

The 2024 art fair was not the first time Art Basel has witnessed the “Banana Connection” with historical branches into Art Basel Miami’s past. In 2019, the artist Maurizio Cattelan’s first living banana-and-duct-tape installation sold for $120,000 at the fair. Surprised they could get so much for a piece of fruit, the gallery increased the price for the second “edition,” another duct-taped banana, to $150,000. The piece sold within hours (the second installation was purchased for the Guggenheim Museum). Sensing a fantastical opportunity, the gallery sent a rep out into the streets of Miami to buy the first available banana: a piece of fruit purchased for $0.25 from Alum, a Bangladeshi immigrant street vendor. The inequities of the situation could not have been more poignant. Until, that is, the final installation of the “Comedian” sold for $6.2 million last month.

Cattelan’s banana installation fetching a landmark $6.2M for conceptual artwork of this kind is highly controversial. More to the point, it shows the decadent, egocentric dealings of an elitist art world which assigns random values to whatever. It seems that the Chiquita corporation also has partaken of similar elitist colonization. In June, a Florida court ordered the company to pay $38 million to the victims of a marauding Colombian paramilitary group – the United Self Defense Forces – whose actions were sponsored in part by Chiquita, most of whose fruit is harvested in Columbia.

This week in Miami a more benign event continues with ‘Design Miami,’ which also promises to take over the town with shows such as “Disco and Design,” sponsored by Future Perfect at the Standard Hotel and Spa. If you are in Miami, stop by and see how disco influenced the design world beyond the mirrored disco ball. The 1970s are baaaack…