Sarah Buitendach: Did you hear the one about the banana?

In December 2019 I saw Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s artwork, titled Comedian, at the Galerie Perrotin stand at Art Basel in Miami. Rather aptly, my response was to laugh. What other reaction could you have to a Duchamp-like artwork that’s literally a real banana taped to a wall with duct tape?

The other person who was laughing was Cattelan himself. All the way to the bank. He sold two of the three slowly ripening fruit on the spot for US$120 000 each. Then, in a twist befitting a contemporary art fair, late Georgian-born artist David Datuna walked up and ate the remaining “edition”, which at the time was under bid by a museum for US$150 000.

In that vast hall of fancy paintings and poncy gallerists, Datuna made a meal of it and called the “performance piece” Hungry Artist. Later, he told The Guardian that he was a big fan of Cattelan’s art but added, “What I don’t like, however, is that a banana costs 20 cents. I think it is a good idea to put it in a museum if it is free to watch. But when you sell it for $120 000? Then decide to make a second and third edition, and that third edition is $150 000? It is silly, and not good for our contemporary life.“I have travelled in 67 countries around the world in the last three years,” he said, “and I see how people live. Millions are dying without food. Then he puts three bananas on the wall for half a million dollars?” His point was a strong one.

Nevertheless, at that juncture, Galerie Perrotin simply replaced the munched fruit with the next best from the yellow bunch. “He did not destroy the artwork. The banana is the idea,” the gallery’s Lucien Terras said. If this all sounds like the most cynical and surreal grift since an emperor wore no clothes, may I take this moment to say, “Welcome to the art world.” It’s a weird place and if you’re not prepared to suspend reality a bit and have some fun, you’d best avoid it entirely.

As I type this, London is in a flurry of excitement over a bunch of Banksy street-art works that have been springing up around the Big Smoke. They’re all animal themed — and include a howling wolf stencilled onto an old satellite dish (it’s already been stolen) and a rhino on a wall that looks like it’s climbing up the real car parked in front of it.

Like the banana, the mystery artist’s works do fetch mad prices when they are sold, but here they are simply an example of public art at its best. They’re accessible to everyone and supremely enjoyable. I missed these new concrete jungle critters but did spend a morning at the revamped National Portrait Gallery when I was in London recently. It was fantastically stimulating and inspiring to see room after room of paintings, drawings, and photographs that depict centuries of humans in all their guises. From King Henry VIII to writer Zadie Smith, they are all hanging out there — but so was a sea of children, and that is what I enjoyed most.

The museum was heaving with school kids in high-visibility jackets who’d come to learn about the art. Some sat and drew, some bolted between spaces. In all, it was wonderful to behold those littlies radiating joy as they laughed at the preposterous beards of ancient aristocrats and marvelled at spooky death masks. There was even a photograph of artist Sarah Lucas eating a banana for them to wonder about. It was, in short, the magic and madness of art, manifested — fruit included.