"Bananas" - 2025 34" x 45" Mixed medium: wood, plastic, metal, modeling paste, paper, duct tape, oil paint
I’m a bit surprised at myself…
plunging as I have into making “art about art”, something I’ve always had no interest in.
It seemed a hollow venture (closed discussion), cliquish, clubby,
the art world amused with itself… enraptured in front of a mirror.
It often seems mere Intellectual puffery, with dubious contribution to the rest of us.
In 2019, at the renowned Miami Art Basel, rogue artist Maurizio Cattelan
duct taped an everyday banana to a wall. It created quite a stir, - was it Art?
It would seem it was art-enough… it sold (and others) for 6 figures.
… but it wasn’t over -
The banana piece “Comedian” gained more fame & a roar over ‘the price of artworks’.
In 2024, Sotheby’s waded into the water, auctioning “Comedian” for… drumroll… $6.2 million.
Conceptual art has taken us away from the aesthetic art object, favoring the ephemeral concept’.
Gone is a care for the grand traditions of skill & craftsmanship in the “making of art”.
Artists like Maurizio Cattelan are provocateurs, …stirring the cultural forum - (good stuff !)
However, one provocateur deserves another… I thought it funny to employ some backward skill & craft in a parody of the forward “Comedian”.
I’m a bit surprised at myself…
plunging as I have into making “art about art”, something I’ve always had no interest in.
It seemed a hollow venture (closed discussion), cliquish, clubby,
the art world amused with itself… enraptured in front of a mirror.
It often seems mere Intellectual puffery, with dubious contribution to the rest of us.
In 2019, at the renowned Miami Art Basel, rogue artist Maurizio Cattelan
duct taped an everyday banana to a wall. It created quite a stir, - was it Art?
It would seem it was art-enough… it sold (and others) for 6 figures.
… but it wasn’t over -
The banana piece “Comedian” gained more fame & a roar over ‘the price of artworks’.
In 2024, Sotheby’s waded into the water, auctioning “Comedian” for… drumroll… $6.2 million.
Conceptual art has taken us away from the aesthetic art object, favoring the ephemeral concept’.
Gone is a care for the grand traditions of skill & craftsmanship in the “making of art”.
Artists like Maurizio Cattelan are provocateurs, …stirring the cultural forum - (good stuff !)
However, one provocateur deserves another… I thought it funny to employ some backward skill & craft in a parody of the forward “Comedian”.