[ti:Italian Artist's Banana Artwork Sells for $6.2 Million]
[al:Arts and Culture]
[ar:VOA]
[dt:2020-11-22]
[by:www.voase.cn]
[00:00.00]A much-publicized art piece made up of a single banana taped to a wall has sold for $6.2 million.
[00:13.53]The sale happened Wednesday night during an auction in New York City at famous art seller Sotheby's.
[00:22.86]The work, called Comedian, was sold to cryptocurrency businessman Justin Sun. 
[00:31.45]He is a Chinese collector and founder of the cryptocurrency company Tron. 
[00:38.72]Sun placed the winning bid over the phone and the sale was completed in cryptocurrency.
[00:46.80]Before the auction, Sotheby's said the unusual art piece was expected to bring in at least $1.5 million.
[00:58.64]But the price quickly started rising after the auction began, with people bidding inside the auction room, as well as on the phone and online.
[01:11.92]The art piece had already sold three times for prices between $120,000 and $150,000, The Associated Press reported.
[01:27.68]Sun said in a statement after the auction that Comedian "is not just an artwork." 
[01:36.29]He added that the piece "bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community."
[01:45.53]Sun said he planned to eat the banana, as at least two onlookers did when the artwork was presented at places around the world.
[01:57.25]Sotheby's says the fruit was always meant to be replaced repeatedly, along with the duct tape.
[02:07.24]The work was created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. 
[02:13.73]It was first presented in 2019 at the Art Basel Miami Beach show in Miami, Florida. 
[02:23.02]The piece quickly led to much public discussion about what should be considered art.
[02:31.05]Comedian belongs to a kind of art known as conceptual artwork.
[02:38.35]A conceptual piece is one in which the idea or meaning behind the work is more important than the finished object itself.
[02:50.95]The head of contemporary art at Sotheby's is David Galperin.
[02:57.11]He told the AP he understands the piece's popularity because it is highly provocative. 
[03:06.23]Provocative describes something likely to produce a strong reaction and much public debate.
[03:14.94]"What Cattelan is really doing is turning a mirror to the contemporary art world," Galperin said. 
[03:25.58]He added that he thinks Comedian can cause people to question what values should be attached to artworks and what can be defined as artwork.
[03:39.35]"What you buy when you buy Cattelan's Comedian is not the banana itself, but a certificate of authenticity," Galperin said. 
[03:51.05]That document, he added, gives the owner permission to reproduce the banana and duct tape on their own wall as an original artwork by the artist.
[04:04.46]The sale of Comedian came shortly after Sotheby's auctioned off a famed artwork in the Water Lilies series by French painter Claude Monet.
[04:19.47]That piece sold on Monday for $65.5 million.
[04:26.41]When asked to compare Cattelan's simple wall art to major works like Monet's, Galperin said that form of art, called impressionism, was not taken seriously when that movement first began.
[04:45.04]"No important, profound, meaningful artwork of the past 100 years or 200 years, or our history for that matter, did not provoke some kind of discomfort when it was first unveiled," Galperin said.
[05:05.58]I'm Bryan Lynn.