Crypto investor eats Cattelan's Banana: who's the real conceptual artist now?

The news has already spread worldwide: Justin Sun, a Chinese collector and founder of the cryptocurrency platform TRON, has purchased Comedian (2019) by Maurizio Cattelan, the world’s most famous banana taped to a wall, for $6.24 million ($5.2 million hammer price, plus fees). The artwork, initially estimated between $1 and $1.5 million, was sold during Sotheby’s "The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction" in New York on November 20, 2024. Even before the auction, all signs pointed to a historic sale, starting with Sotheby’s announcement of the possibility of paying for the piece in cryptocurrency. This move signaled the auction house’s readiness to engage with the present and appeal to a new audience of collectors, especially now, with Bitcoin’s value soaring following Donald Trump’s re-election as U.S. President.
 

The silence was broken just minutes after the hammer fell. Breaking from the typical confidentiality of the art market, Sun issued a public statement about the purchase, which was quickly reported by the media. "I’m Justin Sun, and I’m excited to announce that I’ve managed to purchase the iconic artwork by Maurizio Cattelan, Comedian. This is not just an artwork; it represents a cultural phenomenon that connects the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community." But it didn’t end there. On X, Sun shared his intention to eat the banana, an integral part of the artwork: "In the coming days, I will eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in art history and popular culture." Until then, it might have seemed like a provocation. But today, during a press conference at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, Sun kept his promise, eating two bites of the world’s most expensive banana. And with it, perhaps, the absurd elitism of the art system. A system that Cattelan has always mocked, but which, having become one of the most famous and sought-after artists in the world, inevitably ended up representing. One purchase, a few tweets, and a single gesture: that’s all it took for the entrepreneur to transform the artwork into something that conceptually closely resembles a non-fungible token. The value of the banana, more than as a physical object, is now more immaterial than ever: while it already existed as Cattelan’s intellectual property intervention, it now lives in the media frenzy generated by Sun.

A gesture that warns us: the world is changing, and with it, so is art. It is impossible to view the system through the same lens as before. What has just unfolded is a narrative that feels like a performative artwork, with a conceptual twist worthy of Maurizio Cattelan’s early days. A narrative that promises to leave a mark, if nothing else, in the history of art. But this time, the author is a digital entrepreneur.