Two Cheers for Maurizio Cattelan

For H.B.

Just now I see in the news that a previously little known, rarely seen portrait by Caravaggio has reappeared in Italy. Because I am very interested in him, having written about his art repeatedly and read some of the vast literature about him, I would love to see this work. Maybe, indeed, it’s worth braving the inevitable crowds and traveling to view it. I learn also in the news about Maurizio Cattelan Cattelan’s Comedian (2024), a banal banana taped to the wall with duct tape. As a senior aesthetician, I am author of numerous accounts about the nature of art. And so I want also to think about this work. But even if it were on display at the Carnegie Museum, which is just a mile from my house, I would not get in line to look at it. I don’t need to see Comedian to analyze it.

This first part of my present discussion of Comedian is almost mechanical. Any first year grad student in art history could do it. As a little study of art history, or just scanning of Wikipedia reveals, there now is a long tradition of such challenging artworks. Marcel Duchamp’s ready made, Fountain (1917), a men’s urinal turned 90 degrees to become a sculpture, has been enormously influential. And so it is easy to stage an analysis of Comedian, for much of this well developed argumentation about Duchamp applies also to Cattelan’s work.

Compared to a traditional artist, Cattelan has not done enough. He has just taken an ordinary banana, added a title, and taped it onto a wall. But this radical exercise in deskilling needs to be understood, it could be argued, with reference to a skilled artist’s mental activities. I am not an artist, and so cannot really make a work like Comedian. But Cattelan can, for he is a well established artist. Of course. no special skill is needed to pick a banana and tape it to the wall. But when Cattelan made Comedian, he almost inevitably linked it to his many prior works. (Could he have lost his mind?)_ And so, recognizing that Comedian is an interesting artwork requires a sophisticated response, involving some knowledge of recent art. To make it, Cattelan needed to know about Duchamp and his numerous successors. The banana in Comedian was purchased from a Manhattan street stand for 35 cents. And so, its sales price of 6 million dollars is an extreme markup. But what was auctioned was not just a banana from the street stand, but what Cattelan created, an artwork consisting of that banana and duct tape together with its title, Comedian. And that name deserves interpretation. (After all, bananas do not have names.) Cattelan has given us some clues. A successful comedian causes us to laugh. Bananas normally are not funny, but this artwork is.

The New York Times art reviewer Jason Farago offered a highly intelligent analysis of this situation.

It is not just “a banana.” It is a banana and a piece of duct tape, and this is a significant difference. “Comedian” is not a one-note Dadaist imposture in which a commodity is proclaimed a work of art — which would be an entire century out of date now. . . “Comedian” is a sculpture, one that continues Mr. Cattelan’s decades- long reliance on suspension to make the obvious seem ridiculous and to deflate and defeat the pretensions of earlier art.

As I noted, these general lines of argument are very familiar. Thierry de Duve, to name just one distinguished writer, has published a magisterial discussion of these problems. And so, what interests me here is a less familiar question: Why can Duchamp’s very familiar gesture of more than a century ago be replicated with such acclaim right now? Of course, successful visual art often builds upon tradition. Imagine some young artist who, admiring or resenting Cattelan’s success, proposes to duct tape some asparagus on the wall, labeling it Homage to Cattelan. This work would be overly derivative. Why, then, since Homage to Cattelan derives transparently from Comedian, are we not similarly dismissive of Cattelan’s work? Or suppose that some wayward disciple of Cattelan makes a replica of Comedian, but with a different title: Tragic Figure. Her goal, this artist says, is very different: She is a Marxist who comments on the absurdities of the art market. My sense, sight unseen, is that Tragic Figure is too derivative to be worth attention.

A century ago, in Duchamp’s time, what was at stake was the claim that the ready mades are artworks. How, it was asked, could such banal objects be set alongside the fine artworks of the modernist tradition? As we know, many of his artist colleagues paid no attention to his ready mades. But thanks in part to the extensive discussions of Duchamp since the 1960s, that is no longer an interesting issue. Now, however, we are concerned with the overheated contemporary art market. When Farrago explains why Cattelan’s works are far superior to Banky’s much discussed street art, you see the consequences this development. Just as old master connoisseurs compare Claude and Poussin; and modernists juxtapose the cubism of Braque and Picasso: so Cattelan is contrasted by this critic to Banksy. And so Comedian is valued as much as major old master paintings.

How should we understand this situation? Like some other neo-Duchampian artists, Cattelan divides his audience. You may believe that Comedian shows how foolish is the market in contemporary art. But you may rather conclude that in drawing so much attention to a very simple-looking work, Cattelan proves to be extraordinarily shrewd, a major visual thinker. Who else is attracting so much attention? Comedian edged Donald Trump off of the front page of a New York newspaper The Post ! Of course, we don’t know whether this work will satisfy the test of time. But right now, Comedian certainly inspires reflection. That reflection may take the form of severe criticism of the art market, which is as everyone knows tied very directly to extreme economic inequalities.

In our visual culture, as we all know, publicity creates artistic value. And since that culture is obsessed with the art market, Cattelan has hit a nerve. The collector who paid (iust!) six million dollars for Comedian got a bargain. It doesn’t matter whether that work is praised or criticized— what matters is that it has become one of the best known recently made artworks. And in acknowledging what this essay owes to the commentary of a colleague Hakim Bishara, the editor at Hyperallergic to whom it is dedicated, I do not mean to reject his analysis. (Read his account which is on-line at Hyperallergic.) Like him, I am very critical of the art market. But there is nothing altogether new here. When Ernst Gombrich revised his classic The Story of Art for the sixteenth edition in 1995, he too was caught in this situation. After naming and describing Pop Art, he chooses not to include illustrations, not wanting to put Andy Warhol in the same book as Raphael and Michelangelo. He too thus offers a critical perspective on the art market. Even if you were very critical of a new work, like Pop Art or Comedian, in calling attention to it, you validate its importance, singleing it out from among the many new works. If you really think that Comedian is insignificant, best to say nothing about it. As every art critic knows, this is the fate of almost all contemporary art shown in the galleries. But once you start talking about Comedian, even if you are completely critical, inevitably you’re playing into Cattelan’s hands by making his work more famous.

In criticizing Cattellan, you cannot win. For whatever Jason Farrago, Hakim Bishara or David Carrier says, whether positive or critical, the net effect is only to publicize his art. And that makes his work all the more valuable in the art system which lives on publicity. Of course, the price of Comedian is excessive when measured against so many basic human needs that are not being met. (Who would deny that?) In that way, whatever his intentions, or those of the auction house, Cattellan is a political artist. But how we should understand his claims? Farrago writes: “I await a leftist essay on American colonialism in the banana republics.” No doubt he is joking, but perhaps that is coming. Meanwhile while as a philosopher I am thrilled by Comedian, as a moralist,I am a little depressed.

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