--:-- Ryan Knutson: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knutson.
--:-- Kelly Crow: I'm Kelly Crow, and I cover the art market.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Can you tell me the story of when you first heard about the banana?
--:-- Kelly Crow: Okay, so my beginnings with the banana was the opening day of Art Basel, Miami Beach in 2019. That's when I saw this banana duct-taped to a wall. And I saw a little half-circle of people, just taking pictures of it. And they were not the types to buy the work. They were just having fun and posing and taking selfies with it.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And you didn't get a selfie with the banana?
--:-- Kelly Crow: No, I didn't get my selfie.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Back in 2019, when it first showed up at Art Basel, you and others in the art world were somewhat dismissive of the banana, which was listed for sale at $120,000. It seemed just like another quirky piece of contemporary art.
--:-- Kelly Crow: Yeah, we totally missed the point, which is that the entire rest of the art world thinks that the art world is an entire, you know, rigged game and a scam and a joke. And did the emperor, like, even wear clothes to the fair that day? Because somebody duct-taped a banana to a wall and asked $120,000 for it.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And that moment probably did need to stop and be reckoned with in real time.
--:-- Kelly Crow: While I brushed past it, lots of other people stayed and gawked. The banana duct-taped to a wall became a viral sensation. And that was just the beginning.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So over the past five years, the banana has gone on to have an incredibly strange afterlife. Several editions have sold, you know, between $120,000 and $150,000. One has since gotten donated to the Guggenheim, one of the most important museums in New York City. Others have gone on to become basically deified in meme form, and it ultimately culminated in an auction at Sotheby's.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And I'm selling it here, the world's most expensive banana, at $5,200,000. These are words I never thought I'd say. $5 million for a banana.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knutson. It's Friday, December 6th.
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--:-- Ryan Knutson: Okay, so before we dive into the flesh of the banana, can you explain exactly what this piece of art is?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: You want me to peel it back a little bit? Is that what you're asking me to do, right?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Yeah, just, yeah. What does the banana tell us? Is that what you're asking?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Who is on the banana phone, if you will?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Well, let's try to run through all the puns we can possibly think of. We should. We have to, actually.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: I don't know why I wasn't more prepared with this. I don't want to slip up and miss any.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Okay, so the piece is called Comedian. And what it actually is is a real banana and, you know, a stretch of duct tape. And it needs to be on a wall.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: But when you as the owner buy this piece what you actually get are a 14 list of instructions that sort of doubles as a certificate of authenticity 14 pages Yeah Yeah I think there are some illustrations There some illustrations Okay, okay.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And what the artist wants to illustrate are a few of the rules that accompany the work, which means you go out and you buy your own banana and your own duct tape, and you can create the work anywhere you want, but it needs to be on a white wall.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: It needs to be a certain number of inches up from the floor, so roughly eye level. The banana needs to be sort of arcing to the right, not the left. And it needs to be vertical, so not like a smile. It needs to be upright. And then the duct tape has to be, you know, diagonal.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: The instructions are closely guarded, and the general public isn't allowed to see them. It also serves as the main proof of ownership.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Are there instructions in there for what you're supposed to do when the banana eventually rots after like a few days?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Yeah, after a few days, you take it down and you can put up another one. Yeah. Huh. It's ever evolving.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: What is stopping me from just going to the store and buying duct tape and a banana and taping it up at eye level and saying that I now own the banana art?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So absolutely nothing, except that you could have done the same thing with, you know, a Campbell's can of tomato soup, but that doesn't make it a Warhol, right?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So you don't have the version that the artist called art. The artist behind Comedian is a man named Maurizio Catalan. He's an Italian artist who became famous for creating outrageous works and sculptures, like a series of taxidermied horses hanging from a ceiling, and a statue of the Pope getting hit by a meteor.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: In 2011, Catalan told the art world he had retired. But he didn't stay on the sidelines for long. And in 2019, he got an idea. He's noticing that this sort of never-ending stream of art fairs just keeps getting more and more populated with big, splashy, abstract painting, figurative painting.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And he starts to get annoyed that the entire art world is just sort of glomming on to all these splashy, pretty paintings. And where's the bite, right? Where's the provocation?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And so he comes out of retirement to put this banana on the wall. And it really was kind of his like middle finger to the art market.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: He really was trying to say, look, you know, this entire fair is going to be brimming with pretty paintings. So why don't I just cut through all the noise of that and I'll just do something simple and a little bit provocative.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And I will put a banana on the wall and I will call it art. And let's just see what sort of, you know, grenade goes off or not.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: The grenade definitely went off. Comedian went viral at that 2019 Art Basel. It drew massive crowds and got turned into memes and splashed onto t-shirts.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Catalan made five versions of the banana, and each one sold. Why do you think this piece of art resonates so much with people?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: I think it was just funny. It was funny and simple and audacious. and the idea that an artist would call this art, the idea that it would have value and the idea that other people would agree with him that it has value.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: There's just a level of absurdity there that he acknowledges. He was trying to lean into that.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: How did he feel about the fact that this middle finger was like being celebrated?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: I think he was on the one hand, I'm sure very tickled because he had caused a stir and that's really what he's always wanted to do as an artist is sort of make waves and start a conversation.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And I think he was certainly pleased, certainly pleased by that because that is part of what he wanted to do was just to sort of shake things up a little bit and he certainly did.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: After the break, the banana arrives in New York and tests a slippery art market. We'll be right back.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: On brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere Tuesday on NBC.
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--:-- Ryan Knutson: The Hulu original series Only Murders in the Building premieres September 9th. Streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. New episodes Tuesdays.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: The banana hit the auction houses when people in the art market were feeling pretty rotten. It had been in a slump for about two years, with sales down across the board.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Prices for the world's top artists have fallen by as much as half. So there are various reasons why art sells and doesn't sell, but the art market is cyclical like anything else, right?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And there are certain years where everyone is feeling flush and the world's wealthy feel like it's a good idea to buy and sell art at the very upper reaches and everything's fine and the art world feels like a party.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And then there are things like war and elections and, you know, the pandemic and these macroeconomic factors that can cause collectors, even if they're the world's wealthiest people, these are billionaires.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: They have money in good markets and bad, right? They have it, but they feel a little sensitive to sort of splurge. It's a confidence game, right? How confident do they feel spending millions of dollars on art?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And so the market's been sort of in a downturn for the last couple of years. and the auction houses who are market makers were probably behind doors, were probably in a little bit of a panic of just like, how do we change this narrative?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: To do that, Sotheby's decided to look for a spectacle and approached one of the owners of Comedian. How do we make the idea of buying and selling art fun again? Because this is meant to be kind of a respite for the world's wealthy, right?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So I feel like it was really a marketing bonanza and sort of a stroke of genius on Sotheby's part to go out and seek this banana because they knew that it would change the narrative, or at least I think they hoped it did.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: How did the auction go? I mean, it was completely unforgettable. Was it bananas? It was bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S, absolutely.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: B-A-N-A-N-A-N-A-S. Exactly. I've been humming that for days. so when I walked into the auction room the anticipation was building but people didn't have to wait too long and the artworks kind of come out on this thing like these sort of the turntable sort of swiveled right and then out came this banana taped to the wall with one you know very tickled art handler standing there like vanna white you know beside this banana the viral sensation that has skyrocketed to universal recognition when it was first exhibited at the art bars on miami beach in december 2019 mauricio catalan's comedian here it is in all its splendor and the scene was so ridiculous everyone's cell phones went up like i it was like whoosh this vertical whoosh of i mean cynical art dealers folks who've been buying and selling art for decades none of them could resist the urge to snap a little picture of that thing on the turntable
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Did you put your phone up and take a picture of the banana?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Oh, dude, you know I was already Instagram-living it. I mean, I was theirs, yeah.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Did you finally get your banana selfie? Yeah, I finally got my moment with the dang banana. I mean, of course, I had it with like six or seven hundred people in this auction room. Don't let it slip away.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Five million, one hundred thousand. They're not getting these jokes. Five million, what you do, but five million, one hundred thousand.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Don't worry, Mr. Auctioneer. We got your jokes.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: There were seven different bidders for the banana. And eventually, one emerged as the winner. The Catalan is yours. Congratulations. Thank you very much indeed.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: After taxes and fees, the total bill was $6.2 million. The buyer said he intended to pay for it in cryptocurrency. Who bought the banana?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So the winner of the banana is this young guy in his early 30s named Justin Sun. And he is the co-founder of a cryptocurrency platform called Tron.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And he is a very colorful character who sort of came into the art world back in the beginning days of the NFT boom. You know, back when Beeple's, you know, JPEGs were selling for $70 million.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: You remember that, right, during the pandemic? So a lot of these guys sort of came into this world of collecting back then, and they sort of stuck around.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Yeah, I was just going to say, in some ways, the banana reminds me of NFTs because an NFT, it's just this digital piece of art. But the thing that you own is the certificate that proves that you own it
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And the banana is kind of the same way It you know it ephemeral it disposable but it the certificate that you have that says I own that banana that concept Same thing. Yep.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: That clicked for him in big ways. And he found that very profound that this artwork actually operated just like things on the blockchain do.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And for him, that bridge, right, was so enticing. He just felt like he had to own it.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: After winning Comedian at the Sotheby's auction, Sun ate the banana at a livestream press conference. He said, quote, it's much better than other bananas.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Comedian was one of many big sales and a surprisingly good month for the art world. November, which is usually an important bellwether for art markets, saw more than a billion dollars worth of art change hands at the world's auction houses.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So what do you think this auction says about the state-of-the-art market right now?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: So it says, one, that it's not dead and that markets are always going to fluctuate and they're probably object driven as much as they are driven by, you know, these macroeconomic factors.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: But I think it definitely made this really fun. And for the auction houses, that's really important because they're meant to be this playground for the world's wealthy. Right.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And everyone is really closely tracking how the world's wealthy feel. because, you know, if wealthy people feel like the economy is in an upward trajectory, they can really throw their weight around.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And so I think people are maybe more cautiously optimistic about where the art market is going from here. And they have some fun track record to point to, you know, in the next go around.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Kelly, if this banana sold for $6.2 million total, If you had $6.3 million, would you have bid on the banana?
--:-- Kelly Crow: Oh, Ryan, that's not even a question I allow myself to go to. I'm a reporter.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Yeah, I know. I do. It's like an impossible question for me.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: I think, you know, when I head to our Basel, Miami Beach, Will I give some extra pause to any groups of people that I see loitering around anything? Like, yes, I will be more tempted to stop and make sure I'm not missing the banana boat, if you will.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Well done. That was excellent.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Any other final thoughts before we split?
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Yeah. the banana tells us right that the art market and the art world operate on an intellectual and comedic and financial plane that strike the rest of us as completely insane.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And the truth is like if you're gonna go and buy a piece of canvas and some tubes of oil paint and then slather it on a it should probably only be worth, you know, a few dozen dollars.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Like when you start to think about the materials that become art, it's just paint. But then we collectively as a society decide that that picture painted by like some guy named Pablo Picasso, right, turns out to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, right, or da Vinci.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: You know, like this is the whole construct of art is that we as a society decide to agree that something that maybe inherently has very minimal value, has a cultural value way outstripping the materials that were used to make it.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: And so that is kind of the bargain that we make with all artworks. It's just rarely that it's something that can rot after a few days.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: That's all for today. Friday, December 6th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: The show is made by Catherine Brewer, Jonathan Davis, Pia Gadkari, Rachel Humphries, Matt Kwong, Kate Linebaugh, Jessica Mendoza, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alessandra Rizzo, Alan Rodriguez Espinosa, Heather Rogers, Pierce Singhi, Jivika Verma, Lisa Wang, Catherine Whalen, Tatiana Zamis, and me, Ryan Knutson, with help from Trina Menino.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapak, and Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by So Wiley. Additional music this week from Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, Nathan Singapak, Griffin Tanner, and Blue Dot Sessions.
--:-- Ryan Knutson: Fact-checking by Mary Mathis. Thanks for listening. See you Monday.
