You likely already know the full story of the Art Basel banana by now. Kudos is sadly due to trickster Maurizio Cattelan for creating an attention getting Instagrammable metaphor/meme that raked in a nice pile of cash. Good job telling us that everything is a sham while still profiting from the rigged system Maurizio!
Cattelan’s $120k banana reinforces an honest art student’s worst fear; that the market and social millieu that he/she wants to enter is too rotten to even make muffins with. Then again, only the idealistic ones see it that way. I cringe to think of the others: the prematurely-jaded Cattelan wanna-bes who are conniving in their lofts as I write this, wondering just what they might duct-tape to the right wall to pay off their $75k student loan balances.
Yes, there are still sincere artists out there (and many of them are doing well) but Cattelan’s cynicism amplifies and reframes the damaging messages that Andy Warhol aimed low and scored with during his reign two generations ago. Fame and money will validate the art of the future, Warhol foretold, so be sure to grovel at the feet of celebrity and wealth. Like Cattelan, Warhol was partly right, but who wants to be right about something so depressing? Are we really on this planet just to party?
If you love art — as I do — I think you have a moral obligation to expect more and to commit to a more meaningful notion of what it can be. Give me humanistic values even if the apes are taking back the earth (as Homer Simpson once predicted). How about something that speaks to the human situation more honestly and authentically? I really like that caged Holy Family in Claremont, California and it’s a great meme too, even if it is didactic.
I will grudgingly admit that Cattelan has created a metaphor that is somehow just right for the Trump presidency. The cultural schism that the banana evokes — “It is art” vs. “It isn’t art” — mirrors the political schizophrenia and cultural divisiveness of our troubled times. Of course, maybe as an art-world type I’m reading too much into it. Sometimes a banana is just a banana, right?
We are living in a time when distraction and anxiety have warped our beliefs and made us vulnerable. Some have taken to believing that a cruel man with the heart of a dictator makes a good leader. Others have given in to the sad idea that anything can be a work of art. I take issue with both of those views.