From a Sotheby’s auction to a terrified Swedish minister, bananas are getting ripe in the spotlight

November was bananas.
No, really. I couldn’t keep up with my banana alerts this month. Cocaine smugglers are using banana crates. We are eating banana clones. Usher and Ashley McBryde are pushing for banana pudding to become a Thanksgiving game-changer. Leaked emails reveal Sweden’s gender equality minister is stricken with bananaphobia.
Don’t feel bad. I never heard of it either. But it’s apparently a real condition that can be more debilitating than claustrophobia. Imagine if you had both and were accidentally locked inside a Chiquita shipping container?
So aides for Paulina Brandberg need to ensure every venue she visits for government meetings is 100 per cent banana-free. No bananas in the halls. No bananas in adjoining rooms. No bananas on the roof. No smell of bananas on the ride over. No banana mascot waving the Swedish flag on a pack of smokes.
I pray this poor woman never bumps into Bananaman in Stockholm.
There were reports she is getting treatment. Good. But how do you treat bananaphobia? I mean, if you’re scared of spiders, they may try exposure therapy. First, you look at a spider. Then you take a spider selfie. Then you’re in the same room with a spider. Then you touch a friendly spider. Doctors basically know you’re cured when you ask for a pet tarantula.
But the big banana story this month came from the art world. At a Sotheby’s auction, someone paid $6.2 million for a banana duct-taped to a board. There were seven bidders, reported the New York Times, for “what is arguably the most expensive fruit in the world — though it will likely be tossed in a couple days.”
Forget Sotheby’s. Why was this auction not held at Sobeys?
This paean to potassium and polyethylene adhesives is title, “Comedian.” It is the brainchild of Italian prankster/artist Maurizio Cattelan. He first unveiled his Aisle 3 masterpiece in 2019 at Art Basel Miami. It was soon devoured by a performance artist before security could shoot him with apricot darts.
No problem. The banana isn’t the art, you see. If it were, Cattelan would have likely splurged to bronze it or put it in an airtight display case. Since there are multiple editions, he even provides handy “installation instructions” so owners can swap out the banana when it’s browner than me. Makes sense. Anyone dumb enough to buy a banana that costs more than a London pied-à-terre probably needs help peeling.
And, hey, if yellow doesn’t go with the decor, duct-tape an orange or Granny Smith to the wall. Art is in the eye of the beholder — or in this case, the belly.
Justin Sun, the entrepreneur who paid seven figures for a piece of fruit that cost 25 cents, plans to eat his investment. Or he’ll donate it to Elon Musk, he tweeted, so it can be duct-taped to a SpaceX rocket and shot to the moon and Mars.
He better hurry before Donald Trump duct-tapes Musk to one of those rockets.
Mr. Sun? If you’re reading this, please check your email. I sent you something a few days ago. We are hoping to sell you a plate of poutine for a mere $1 million with all proceeds going to the Star’s Santa Claus Fund. If you accept, I will also throw in a mottled grape that, at a certain angle, looks like William Shatner.
You know what’s bananas about this story? When I wrote about “Comedian” five years ago, the asking price was $120,000. Had Sun dived into this banana split then, he could have purchased “Comedian” and the Six Million Dollar Man.
The banana has appreciated more than a Picasso.
But what hasn’t changed is the number of pretentious eggheads with elbow patches who are still searching for deeper meaning in this botanical berry from the genus Musa:
The banana is a meta-commentary on the absurdity of modern art. It’s a vestigial nod to the perishable nature of existence. It’s a sly inversion of Freud’s Phallic Stage. It’s a trenchant meditation on the inevitable fusion of Home Depot and Trader Joe’s.
Hey, Eggheads, lean in close: NO, IT’S JUST A DUCT-TAPED BANANA!
Andy Warhol at least painted those “Campbell’s Soup Cans.” He didn’t nail actual cans of Chicken Noodle to a barn door and wait for the hosannas to drown out ABBA inside Studio 54. Cézanne’s “Still Life With Apples” can’t be safely used in any pie or fritter recipe. Look, don’t eat.
These crypto bros first scammed their way into currency. Now they are getting scammed by art. Meanwhile, with all this money flying, millions are starving around the world.
It is, in a word, bananas.