On “Comedian,” NFTs, and Value

Artist? Prankster? Genius?

By Raf Carillo

Whether you know it or not, you’re probably at least peripherally aware of Maurizio Cattelan. Part Christo and Jeanne-Claude, part Andy Warhol , he’s an artist equally capable of crafting a poignant salute to international tragedy and a middle finger (sometimes literally) to all that is art and commerce (spoiler: here we will be discussing the latter).

For instance: in 2016 Cattelan created an 18-karat gold toilet for the Guggenheim Museum, entitled “America,” that more than 100,000 visitors lined up to use (that’s right, use) over the course of its exhibition. The piece, estimated to be worth $6 million, was stolen while on loan to Blenheim Palace in 2019, and “America” remains lost today. Consider art theft as a career, I guess.

Cattelan is also largely responsible for OkCupid’s 2018 DTF campaign, the colorful iterations of which were for a time the most entertaining thing on the subway outside of your iPhone. If nothing else, he is an absolute master at gripping the public’s attention.

Miami, 2019

This ability was never more on display than during Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019. With 81,000 visitors, the fair presented Cattelan, who hadn’t produced work for a fair in 15 years, with the perfect opportunity to flaunt his most playful tendencies. In the booth space of the Perrotin Gallery, Cattelan duct taped a banana to an otherwise empty wall and entitled the work, “Comedian.”

Over the five day duration of the fair, two editions of “Comedian” sold for $120,000 apiece, with a third edition selling for $150,000, but not before fellow mad scientist artist David Datuna broke rule number one of all fairs, galleries and museums — do NOT touch the art — and ate the banana while stunned onlookers took videos and gallery director Peggy Leboeuf searched for the right words.

Datuna claimed his consumption of “Comedian” was itself a work of performance art, which he called “Hungry Artist.” A replacement banana was swiftly installed, attendees continued posing in front of it for photos, and no apparent harm was done to any reputations or prices (though Datuna was briefly charged with Criminal Mischief).

Paying for an Idea

How does the word “edition” apply when the materials are a banana and duct tape and making the art itself requires no discernible skill? In the case of “Comedian” it means that the buyer is provided with a certificate of authenticity, meaning you’ve bought an iteration of the idea of “Comedian,” and any (inevitable) replacement of the banana or duct tape will not undo said authenticity.

It’s the ultimate example of conceptual art, though it is not without precedent. The late Sol LeWittfamously streamlined and codified his pencil drawing technique so that teams of people could make them, and, stepping away from the art world for a moment, you may remember a certain ex-president similarly licensing his last name for real estate projects he actually had nothing to do with.

The Wild West

The story of “Comedian” gained a lot of traction, but it’s just one from the veritable grab bag of scandal and semi-scandal that is the art world. From the dubious authenticity of Salvator Mundi to the long term grift at the Knoedler Gallery to the open secret that art can serve as the perfect vehicle for money laundering, just about anything can happen in a market that is virtually unregulated and more or less recession-proof.

Cattelan took a good amount of negative press for his stunt, with one article deeming him Worst of the Week at Miami Basel and claiming that he had “duped a group of collectors.” But where, exactly, did the duping occur? It’s naïve to think the collectors who spent their money on “Comedian” were any less aware than Cattelan of how ridiculous the situation was, and if this were a true con job, many more editions would have been sold.

Without speaking for Cattelan, it seems like part what he was getting at is that if you are in a position to spend the kind of money that major art collectors routinely spend, it doesn’t really matter what the object or idea you’re buying is. That is an absurd truth, and it angered some that 1) Cattelan was willing to exploit it, and 2) he found collectors willing to play (and pay) along.

In Cattelan’s own words: “A work like that, if you don’t sell it, it’s not a work of art.”

Time to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love NFTs

The “produce affixed to a wall” market is probably going to remain cold for the foreseeable future, but the intervening years have brought the rise of NFTs, which often elicit negative reactions similar to the ones leveled at “Comedian.” How can its originality be proven?

Well, if you’re going to ask that question, you also have to ask why it’s okay for auction houses to demand the prices they do when at least 50 percent of all art work in circulation is arguably fake. Is that any less ridiculous than paying six figures for an idea, or something you can’t touch? The art world seems to exist on a separate plane of rules from the rest of life, and everyone is basically okay with that. Think about it: would you ever buy a car that starts 50 percent of the time?

And if anything, NFT authentication is probably more rigorous than the old guard. Meme fraud is known to be a problem in the brave new world of digital art, and industry repository Know Your Meme has of late dedicated considerable resources to fighting it. Sure, fraud remains a possibility, but the whole point of blockchains, where NFT transactions occur, is to have an accurate, verifiable, and public peer-to-peer record of ownership. At the risk of putting too fine a point on the matter: traditional art provenance is, historically, quite easy to fudge, and transactions at auction are private and often anonymous.

Asset Agnosticism

NFTs are not the first leap forward in financial assets, and they certainly won’t be the last. Value, like taste, is subjective, but what does that look like in practice? That is a question we hope to address at Trading.TV. We are onboarding financial content creators of all backgrounds and areas of interest so that our users can benefit from the broadest and deepest possible base of knowledge, and pursue every curiosity. The only constant is change, and we will always embrace that.