Our friend Maurizio Cattelan, he of the golden carsey which was half-inched from Blenheim Palace, has been in the news again. One of his latest masterpieces, a banana stuck to a wall with duct tape and entitled Comedian, has been bought by a French collector for a cool $120,000. Some people have more cents than sense.
It was on display at the Art Basel show in Miami Beach when a fellow artist, David Datuna, walked up to it, took it off the wall and took a bite from it. The epitome of an esurient artist, he declared the banana to be “very good”.
Datuna was whisked away for questioning but the gallery was not too concerned. The value of the piece of work was in the certificate of authenticity and, as you might expect, the banana was meant to be replaced every few days. They do go off, after all.
I’m not too sure that Datuna will be turning his attention to the winner of this year’s Turnip Prize, a pair of knickers with a burnt hole in the front, entitled, rather wittily I feel, “Bush Fire Down Under”. The prize is awarded to a piece of crap art produced with the least amount of effort possible. Had it had Cattelan’s stamp of authenticity, I’m sure it would have been worth at least $100,000.
Sometimes modern art baffles me.
windowthroughtime 
One is a parody and the other a piece of crap. I did a couple articles analyzing the insanity of the fawning over “Comedian” on my blog.