The Million-Dollar Banana
On the importance of funny art
Tonight, Sotheby's is auctioning off a banana duct-taped to a wall for $1M. My older brother, if he reads this newsletter, just ran into a wall, and not because he was hungry. Here’s the piece, or a photo of the piece…or maybe a photo that represents a portion of the piece? I’m not sure. Art’s confusing. Anyway:
I'm not clear on whether the banana is officially the work, or if it's the instructions that tell you how to affix it to the wall. I'm not really interested in what this says about the definition of art, either. If you keep wondering if something is art, then there’s your answer. The reason I find this million-dollar banana interesting? I hope it leads to the acknowledgment that great art can be funny.
Years ago, my wife, our friend Bamford and I attended Matthew Barney's takeover of the Guggenheim. He was married to the Icelandic musician Bjork — Barney, not Bamford — who talked about wanting to feed deer on mountaintops. He attended Yale. Loved Vaseline. Played high school football. Made a series of art films called the Cremaster cycle featuring strange satyrs.
We had the right crew for the visit. My wife, Nika, was an art major in college, and Bamford was working in a gallery at the time and studying Spinoza at the New School. Not only did we read The New Yorker; we knew someone who wrote for them. So we went in there with serious cultural intentions.
As we wound our way up from the ground floor, we stopped talking. The elements of Barney's Cremaster cycle on display had a way of upsetting you on multiple levels. I still send a picture of this guy to my friend Derek a few times a year:
On the very top level, we stopped at a huge wooden cocktail bar that had been completely slathered in Vaseline. There were signs all around it asking visitors to refrain from touching the piece. Yet the slight woman in front of us could not resist.
She checked her shoulder for security, reached out, and swiped at the surface.
Instantly she recoiled in shock. There was Vaseline on her finger!
I'm not sure why it was so surprising for her to discover that it was actually petroleum jelly, and not an illusion, but she immediately rushed for the exit. Her flight immediately loosened up our small band of cultured art aficionados. We laughed. Not too much, though, because this was still a very important show.
Then we reached one of the final pieces: A room full of pigeons. The floor was covered in pigeon sh*t and their feathers were everywhere and all the visitors who pressed against the glass to gaze upon the birds were very, very serious indeed.
I'm pretty sure the philosopher laughed first, and hardest. Nika and I followed. We hurried out and down the stairs, laughing not just at the pigeons, but at all of it: the spectacle, the seriousness, the vast quantities of Vaseline distributed throughout.
Was Barney trying to be funny? I don’t think so. Probably not. But if it’s okay for art to be funny, then maybe we should reevaluate some artists. The deeply serious and beautifully crafted oil paintings of half-eaten sandwiches by contemporary painter Noah Verrier are kind of hysterical. Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the Italian artist who painted portraits of humanoid figures made of fruits and vegetables? Weird, but funny.
Japanese legend Yayoi Kusuma isn't necessarily funny, but when I experienced one of her works, at The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, I did laugh very hard. The piece consisted of a dark, mirrored room with a mirrored ceiling. Her signature colorful polka dots were painted on the floor.
The mirrors created the illusion that these polka dots were everywhere, extending in every direction, and I briefly got the feeling that if I ran straight ahead I would travel through a portal into some kind of polka dot world, and maybe never find my way back. So, that was odd, the way she made the walls and the surrounding world disappear. Then I started thinking about how this Japanese artist had me standing there in a room full of polka dots all weirded out. So I laughed.
Michelangelo’s David is a little serious. But maybe if he were holding his childhood blanket on his shoulder? Or a banana?
Which brings me back to the banana duck-taped to the wall. I don't have the extra cash lying around to buy the work, but I would if I could, if only to legitimize humorous art. In the meantime, I look forward to duck-taping a banana to the wall of my older brother's house the next time I visit. You should do the same for your friends and loved ones. Let me know if you need instructions.
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