“Comedian” and Craft

    In October 2018, a painting by the street muralist Banksy, titled “Girl with a Balloon,” went up for auction at Sotheby’s.  Known for creating graffiti art that is by its very nature uncollectible, Banksy has produced very few prints and even fewer paintings that might be bought and sold.  Not surprisingly, this piece was expected to fetch a high price.  And it did.  The auctioneer’s gavel fell, and a final price of $1,400,000 was set.  And then, an instant later, the piece began to self-destruct.  A paper shredder cleverly hidden within the frame began cutting the piece into ribbons.

    The audience gasped.  The auctioneer’s face went slack.  Some rushed to somehow save the painting.  Yet part way through the destruction the shredder malfunctioned, leaving only the lower half of the piece destroyed.  Despite its “transformation,” the buyer went through with the purchase, which seems to have been a good investment.  Six months later, in March of 2019, the piece was resold for an astounding $25,327,452, more than eighteen times its original value!

    Part of me understands how “Girl with Balloon” resold for so much more than its original sale price.  It was not the same piece of art.  Retitled “Love Is in the Bin,” this new piece had added meaning and significance.  But the original idea that Banksy was going for was entirely lost.  He seems to have been trying to subvert the art market itself, producing a piece that could not be resold and thereby denying the collectors and auction houses their profits.  Instead, the piece's value skyrocketed, and Sotheby’s central place within the meaning and money-making machine that is the art world was only strengthened.  At the sale of “Love Is in the Bin,” the auction house proudly proclaimed that the piece was the first to have been created during an auction.

    I was reminded of “Girl with Balloon” when I recently read about another auction.  In November of 2024, Sotheby's sold a piece by artist Maurizio Cattelan titled “Comedian,” which consists (consisted?) of a banana duct-taped to a wall.  Its final price was $6,200,000, including auction fees.

    The artist explained that the piece was a commentary on the art market and how, once a piece of art is sold, the artist ceases to profit from the value of the work.  “Auction houses and collectors reap the benefits, while the creator, who makes the very object driving the market, is left out.”  By making perishable art Cattelan was subverting this resale market, though “Comedian” did come with instructions and diagrams on how to mount a new banana once the original was gone.  The purchaser, Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun, proclaimed that he would eat the banana as part of a “unique artistic experience.”

    At first blush, all this feels pretty alien to the craft world: the de-emphasis of skill, the centrality of collectors and auction houses, and the astronomical prices.  And some might say, “Well, of course it feels alien.  Art and craft are different.”  Years ago I wondered about the art/craft hierarchy, and today looking at “Comedian” I might agree that there seems to be a pretty large gap between the two.  But the more I think about it the more I find the art/craft debate tired, slippery, and unhelpful.

    Some folks trace the origins of the high art/low art debate to Enlightenment thinkers in the late eighteenth century. Enraptured with the idea of reason, they wanted to distinguish between art that was worthy of contemplation and art that was merely accessible to the masses.  Others might go back to Plato and his privileging of the mind over the body, and logic over art.  Whatever its origins, over the past one hundred years this hierarchy has been challenged repeatedly, from the Arts and Crafts Movement up to the present day.  

    For me, the attempt to distinguish art from craft, even in the face of such conceptual art as ‘Comedian,” does not wash.  Can we really assert that one is unique and the other mass-produced, one contemplative and the other accessible, one aesthetic and the other merely useful, etc….  Every cultural producer, from Cattelan to myself, struggles with similar issues: How much should we produce? What meaning does our work hold? What is the relationship between the artist and the consumer? How will our work be used? What is the value of our work?  

    Well-carved spoons are useful sculptures.  Artists struggle with iteration and reproduction as much as craftspeople.  We all weave stories about our work—about the material, the process, the place, ourselves as artists, and the piece’s intended use—which adds significance (and value) to our work.  I think the best craftspeople among us disregard these art/craft distinctions.  Jögge Sundqvist comes to mind.  And even the most conceptual artists like Cattelan produce useful art (get it,…produce.)  

 Just see what is on Justin Sun’s menu.