Column: Artist duct-taped banana to wall, sold for $6.2 million

Dear readers,

I received a letter this week from my childhood friend and Shelbyville’s favorite retired mailman, Rock Robertson. 

I wouldn’t normally feel a need to fact-check my old friend Rock, but he claimed that an artist had duct-taped a banana to a wall and sold it for over six million dollars. Now that is a tall tale.

I thought maybe Rock had just spotted a headline on The National Enquirer while in the checkout line at the store. So, I did a little fact-checking of my own.

It turns out Rock had his facts right. Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan did just duct-tape a banana to a wall and called his masterpiece “Comedian.”  Sotheby’s, the famous auction house in New York City, sold the artwork to billionaire cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun for $6.2 million dollars. 

As legendary pitchman Ron Popeil would always say, “But wait, there’s more!”

At a press conference after the sale, the lucky winning bidder proceeded to eat the banana. 

Enough prologue, here is Rock’s letter. Enjoy!

Dear Kris,

Do you remember that time when we were kids and your application to art school got rejected? I think you were even more upset than the time you discovered the X-ray glasses you ordered didn’t work.

You applied to an art school advertised on the back of a comic book.  You spent all afternoon drawing a squirrel to send in with your application. After waiting the required 6-8 weeks for a response it was a rejection letter.

Well, sharpen up your Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil and try drawing that squirrel again buddy. Art these days isn’t as hard as it was when we were kids. Some guy in New York just duct-taped a banana to a wall and sold it for over six million dollars.

In fact, maybe you should forget about even drawing the squirrel. Duct tape and bananas were both on sale this morning at Walmart. I’ve enclosed a roll of duct tape and a bunch of bananas for you.

You might not be as talented as that New York artist, but maybe you can tape a banana to a wall and sell it for a few hundred dollars.

Sincerely,

Rock Robertson

Dear Rock,

I do remember both the X-ray specs and signing up for the art correspondence course. I still remember the advertisement that caught my attention. 

“A Fascinating Money-Making Art Career Can Be Yours”

Every week I would order something advertised in the pages of a comic book and prove once again that P.T. Barnum was right when he famously said, “There is a fool born every minute!” 

Thank you for the art kit. Taping a banana to the wall should be easier than painting by numbers. Art is evolving. During the Renaissance an artist needed a lot of talent. It is somehow hard to imagine Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo duct-taping a banana to the wall. 

Enter the 20^th century, where artists like Man Ray and Salvador Dali pushed the boundaries of what was considered art. Surrealism, with its bizarre and dream-like qualities, made people question reality itself.  And then came Andy Warhol, who showed us that art could be found in the most mundane objects -- like a can of soup.

Andy Warhol once painted a still life of a banana and it was used on an album cover for The Velvet Underground. I guess it was only a matter of time before the art world discovered the beauty of skipping the part of art that takes talent and skill and just duct tape a banana to a wall.

Thanks again for the artist kit,

Kris

P.S. If you ever run across X-ray specs that really work, pick up a pair for me.

See you all next week, same Schwinn time, same Schwinn channel.

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